


'Til I Burn Beyond Control

by FuryBeam136



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Pretty much everyone is a laguz, except it’s not really implied it’s just not explicit, hence the path of radiance/radiant dawn tag, i love that beautiful person, laguz au, special thanks to my laguz bro
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-01-29 03:31:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21403480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuryBeam136/pseuds/FuryBeam136
Summary: The Adrestian Empire has long been lead by an eagle of the Hresvelg house. Edelgard now stands as heir to the throne with a toxin in her veins no other Hresvelg eagle has ever dealt with, and a metaphorical knife at her throat. She is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode, and when she does, the whole world will see it happen.The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus fights to keep its independence, and at the head of it all are the noble Blaiddyd lions. Dimitri expected to have time before he had to learn to rule. But tragedy strikes when it is least wanted. With his mind on the brink of falling into feral instinct, he stands on his hind legs and puts on a mask.The Leicester Alliance is in chaos. The current Duke Riegan is believed to be the last of the Riegan deer, until Claude shows up. But no deer, especially no Riegan deer before him, has ever had fur quite that long, or ears quite that shape. With the inability to prove himself a Riegan, he fights just to stay alive in a world that hates him for existing.Somewhere in the middle of it all, an impossibility is born. Several impossibilities, in fact. All of them connected by threads no thicker than strands of a spider's web, yet so much stronger.
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring, Edelgard von Hresvelg & Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 28
Kudos: 76
Collections: The Linspar Discord's Collection of Chaos and Love





	1. All My Life They Let Me Know

Linhardt was born for negotiation. To sit at a table full of people all with their own demands and find a solution that pleases all of them. But that is just so incredibly tiring. He sees no reason to put any of his limited energy into pleasing everyone but himself. So he ignores his father’s attempts to teach him how to negotiate, instead sleeping or daydreaming through them. And then one day, his father’s “friend” (for his father had called him a friend, but the venom in his voice implied that this man was anything but) comes for a meeting, and his son comes with him.

Caspar is different from anyone else Linhardt has met up until this point. Rather than the wings Linhardt is used to seeing, or the lack thereof he’s seen on the beorc his father deals with often, Caspar has furry blue ears and a matching tail that never seems to stop swishing across the grass.

“Wow, you have wings!” Caspar says with a grin, and Linhardt frowns.

“And you don’t,” is his simple, confused response.

“Yeah! I’m a tiger!” Caspar’s chest puffs out with pride, and he flexes muscles that are clearly defined. “What are you?”

“I’m a heron.”

“Cool! Will you come play with me? My dad says he’s too busy!”

“I suppose,” Linhardt says with a shrug. Caspar’s ears perk and his tail flicks faster.

“Great! Come on!”

Caspar’s version of playing is far more rigorous than Linhardt was expecting, and it doesn’t take long for him to be lying panting in the grass, black spots dancing across his vision. Caspar comes to rest with him, though the tiger still has so much more energy than the heron ever will. He ends up falling asleep with his head on Caspar’s shoulder.

His father tells him not to be friends with Caspar. But Linhardt doesn’t have anyone else to be friends with, so he ends up befriending the boy anyway. Besides, whatever his father thinks is going to come of it surely won’t.

*~*~*

Felix wasn’t ready to see Glenn’s bloodied wings come home with nothing but a sword by their side. He wasn’t ready for it, and he still isn’t, as he stares at the handful of feathers on the mantel.

His dad says Glenn died a knight’s death. Felix feels sick at the thought. He whirls on his father and he screams and he cries because Glenn is _dead,_ couldn’t he be just a little more considerate of anything?

His father apologizes, but the words ring hollow. Felix ignores his father even as he’s told Ingrid and Sylvain will be coming to visit for awhile. He asks why Dimitri isn’t coming. His father says Dimitri is mourning. And then Felix is swept into rage again because _he_ is still mourning, hasn’t had the chance to even fully accept that Glenn is gone, and he still has to see people and act like he’s okay.

Ingrid understands him. They spend their first night together wrapped in each others arms and wings and sobbing until Sylvain joins in with the slight comfort of his body's rhythmic vibrations as a purr rumbles in his throat.

Felix doesn’t cry anymore after that night. He refuses. Crying is a waste of time, and he doesn’t have time to waste. He throws himself into training, swordplay and hand to hand combat and fighting in his shifted form for longer. Ingrid and Sylvain beg him to stop, but he can’t, he can’t let himself be weak enough to fall like Glenn did.

Ingrid leaves first, with a fistful of Glenn’s feathers and tears on her cheeks. He wonders what she plans to do with them. Not that it matters much. She can’t bring him back. No one can.

His eyes sting, but Felix refuses to cry.

Maybe he should cry. Sylvain seems to only get even more worried about him as he doesn’t, but he can’t bring himself to show any weakness. He needs to be strong. He needs to be stronger than Glenn was, strong enough to protect his friends and live to tell the tale.

When Sylvain leaves again, Felix is almost positive it’s against his will. Sylvain is asking him over and over if he’s sure he’s going to be okay, and each time, Felix promises that he will. That everything is going to be alright.

When he’s all alone again, Felix still doesn’t cry, no matter how badly he wants to.

*~*~*

Claude knows he is definitely out of place in the world. First, he’s a deer. Which, in and of itself, is highly unusual. Second, he is half Almyran, meaning he is half wolf. Which makes things even harder for him, since there’s just no way he can fit in here, or anywhere else.

So he leaves Almyra. He sneaks out in the dead of night to go to Fodlan, to find his place as the… something something, important leader man. He isn’t sure what the official title is, he never paid that much attention. But when he gets to Fodlan, he realizes he has no idea where to go from there.

He’s lucky to find Judith. She laughs at him, “A Riegan deer crawling in the mud!” but she takes him under her wing nonetheless. Figuratively, of course. Lions don’t have wings. If she were a bird, however, Claude would have leapt at the opportunity to make a pun of it.

So maybe he doesn’t know anything about Fodlan’s culture. Or about its people. But he assumes it can’t be all that different from Almyra. Right?

Wrong. It’s very different from Almyra. There’s nothing really different in terms of things that matter, if you ask Claude, but apparently they care a whole lot. And apparently Claude is supposed to care too.

He really doesn’t care, but whatever. If they care, and he needs them to like him, he supposes he’ll have to learn how to fit in.

Judith notes the things that are just a little off about him, and he finds that nerve wracking. But she seems to be mostly fine with it. At least he has her, he supposes.

It’s better than being alone. And he’s been used to being alone for a long time.

*~*~*

Hubert refuses to let his lady die. She comes back to him changed, her hair white as snow and her eyes filled with horror and pain he can only imagine. And he suspects that even then, his imagination could never conjure the horrors inflicted on her, no matter how hard he were to try. He doesn’t want to try, really. It seems like so much more effort than it’s really worth.

She isn’t right, not anymore. She spends one moment smiling and thanking him and acting as she always did before, but then the next she is hollow, standing and staring blankly, a shadow over her face and words caught in her throat. She describes it as a darkness, when he asks. As a choking, tangible haze of shadows that obscures all reason from her mind and fills her veins with fire. Then he sees her at her worst, with her sanity clouded and choked by the toxins he knows are in her veins, with her body shifting rapidly as though it were no effort at all, even though he sees the pain on her face and the heaving of her chest as she gasps for air.

He can’t bear to see her like that, and so he holds her in his arms and wraps his wings around her trembling form and tells her he’s leaving, but he will be back, he won’t be gone for long, he swears to her. And she smiles through the pain and the tears and tells him she’ll wait for him as long as she has to.

Hubert doesn’t go far, refuses to. He searches the streets of Enbarr and he lowers himself to the level of a mere commoner, begging anyone who will listen to point him in the direction of a spirit charmer. And then he finds one, an old beorc man, and he begs some more, begs the man to teach him how to become a spirit charmer like him.

“Laguz are not supposed to become spirit charmers,” the man tells him. “It will be very dangerous.”

“Neither are beorc,” is Hubert’s desperate retort. “I need to do this. Teach me.”

The man sighs, a defeated sound, and sits cross legged on the dusty floor of his old home. “Then sit with me awhile. I will help you.”

Hubert does as instructed, and the world falls into the background as he opens his mind and body to the spirits he knows will need to dwell there. They brush against him, separate and yet merging, and then they leave again until finally, finally, they stay.

And then the world is fire, and Hubert is burning alive.

*~*~*

Dimitri barely remembers what happened until after the fact, when Felix is standing at his side and shaking, and the raven screams to the lion that there is no nobility left in him, no regal posture or kingliness.

There’s blood in Dimitri’s mane and under his claws, and he thinks it’s going to take a while to wash it out. He wonders what he did to those people, what made Felix so afraid. He wonders what those people did to him. What made them deserve this. Did they deserve this? Dimitri is unsure, but he has to believe they did. If they didn’t, then he has done something horrible here. If only he could remember just what it is he did.

Felix is screaming at him, but the words are lost against the voices in his own head. He thinks he hears Glenn. He thinks he hears his father. He thinks he can hear someone else too, but he isn’t sure who it would be. Or maybe it’s someone else, someone who’s still alive, who’s physically present.

Dimitri runs bloody fingers through bloody hair and howls, confusion and rage and sorrow all in one, and Felix flinches away.

He thinks he hears the raven call him a beast. He can’t be certain past the chaos that is the voices in his head. Maybe he should go home. Wash off the blood, sleep away the voices. He really hopes that will work.

*~*~*

Linhardt discovers his power by accident.

He’s just playing with Caspar. Or, well, trying not to, but still trying to watch, and be supportive, and… it’s exhausting to make sense of. But one thing leads to another and then Caspar is up in his face and Linhardt is feeling cornered and threatened and afraid.

He doesn’t know what happens in between, but then Caspar is lying on the ground with black markings along his side and a scream tearing from his throat. Linhardt wants to scream as well, but he finds himself frozen, choking on the air he’s trying so desperately to breathe. There are people rushing around, and Linhardt is quite overwhelmed by it all. His hands are warm. Hot, even, burning just beneath his skin.

Linhardt moves in a rush, tries to reach his friend, but someone holds him back. Not a heron, he assumes, since they resist his struggles with ease even as he screams and begs to be allowed to go to his friend, please, he needs to do something. And then they’re putting Caspar on a stretcher and in a rush of adrenaline-fuelled strength that Linhardt’s body isn’t resilient enough to handle, He wrenches himself out of the strong grip of who he soon realizes is Caspar’s father.

Linhardt grabs Caspar’s shoulders and stares into pained eyes, and then he screams. There’s a desperate rush of energy through Linhardt’s veins and then into Caspar, and the black spot is fading, slowly, too slowly for Linhardt’s liking. And then, as people around him watch in shocked silence, it disappears entirely.

Linhardt finds he is very, very tired. He leans into Caspar’s warmth and closes his eyes, lets himself drift into dreams of a soft green light and a voice whispering to him that he’s going to be great, he’s going to be special.

When he wakes, Caspar is holding him close, and his entire body aches. His hands burn, unpleasant now, and he becomes suddenly aware that they’re bandaged.

“Lin! You’re awake!” Caspar’s grin makes the pain melt away, and Linhardt can’t help letting a small smile grace his own face. “I was scared you were gonna be asleep forever.”

“I wish I could be,” Linhardt mumbles, moving himself further into Caspar’s warm embrace. He thinks the tiger is purring. “You’re very warm. And soft. I think I’m going to go back to sleep now.”

“But Lin! You just woke up!”

“And I’m still rather tired.” Linhardt yawns, and instinctively wraps his wings around his friend. “You make a very good pillow,” he mumbles with a fond smile.

“Do I?” Caspar seems far more excited by the idea than Linhardt would have expected. “Well I guess I’ll just have to keep being your pillow, so you can sleep extra good, so you can be awake to play with me more often!”

“Hmm…” Linhardt smiles wider, lets his eyes flutter closed. “I think I’d like that.”

He wakes again to a hand shaking his shoulder, and he finds he doesn’t much like the feel of this stranger touching him. He realizes eventually that it’s his father, and that makes it worse, for some reason. Linhardt might not be familiar with “normal” families, but he knows that he isn’t supposed to be afraid whenever his father asks him something, afraid of what’s expected of him this time.

“You need to understand what happened, Linhardt. That was not something you should have been able to do.”

Linhardt turns his head, but remains nestled into Caspar’s arms, with white wings blanketing the rare instance of serenity on that bright face.

“You aren’t supposed to be able to cast magic that powerful. You aren’t supposed to be able to cast fire magic.”

“Fire…” Linhardt doesn’t understand. Or rather, he does, he just doesn’t understand what it means. “Did i hurt Caspar?”

“Yes. You hurt Caspar very, very badly,” his father says, and there’s something dark in the tone used to explain. “You hurt him, and you are dangerous for him to be around. But then, you did something even more extraordinary.”

Linhardt listens with confused panic as his father describes crests to him, and then he finds his eyes widening as the implications he quickly catches on to. “Do I have a crest, father?”

“Yes.”

Linhardt blinks a few times, and then he frowns. “I healed Caspar. I’m not dangerous, I’m not!”

“You’re very dangerous, Linhardt. Fire is very dangerous for people like Caspar.”

Linhardt can feel tears welling up in his eyes, and he squeezes them shut, turns away from his father, back to Caspar, who isn’t going to send him away, even if he did hurt him. Because Caspar knows it was an accident. Right? He has to.

Linhardt ignores his father’s incessant rambling, and goes back to sleep, his head buried in Caspar’s chest, where a pair of strong arms wrap around it and hold him safely away from his father’s judgement.

The next morning, Caspar is enthusiastically asking him to play again, and Linhardt, recalling his father’s words, shakes his head and begs him not to ask that of him, not now, not ever again. And Caspar smiles and tells him it’s okay, and everything is going to be alright.


	2. How far I would not go

Marianne won’t claim to understand why Margrave Edmund adopted her. She’s cursed, and he knows that. He knew that before he chose to adopt her, and yet he still did so. She doesn’t understand. She also finds she doesn’t particularly care. She hides herself away and prays to the goddess, because doing anything else would be too difficult. She doesn’t want to cause misfortune for anyone else.

Her confused questions are always met with gentle reprimands, with a request for her to stay in her room and never tell anyone about what she is.

Marianne knows what she is. Twice cursed, a beast in beorc skin. A mark over her back and another hanging over her head to show the world she isn’t worth anything and she really ought to be dead. She screams some nights, as loud as her fragile voice will let her, begs the goddess to take her already.

And Margrave Edmund only watches. Asks her to keep her voice down, sometimes. Asks her to keep hiding, to never tell anyone the truth as to why. And she obeys, because what else is there for her to do? She has no freedom in this world, a world where markings like hers mean nothing but hatred.

*~*~*

Ashe doesn’t know what he expected Lord Lonato to look like. An old, grey-haired man, perhaps. Or maybe younger. He definitely did not realize Lord Lonato was a laguz, nor that he was a large, greying blue tiger with the kind of glare that could freeze even the bravest thief in their tracks. Ashe is certainly not the bravest thief, nor the smartest one. Lonato’s old eyes drift to the book gripped in shaking hands.

“Loog and the Maiden of Wind, hmm?” Lonato smiles, and there’s a warmth there that Ashe wasn’t expecting. “You can take it, if you’d like to read it.”

“S-sorry?” Ashe is sure he must have misheard, but Lonato gestures to the book and nods. “I-I can’t read, sir.”

The laguz shakes his head with a sigh and steps towards him, taking the book and placing it back on the shelf. Ashe is stiff and fearful, knowing any minute now he’s going to be locked up.

“I-I really am incredibly sorry. I was only trying to take care of my family, sir.”

Ashe is certain he never could have predicted the old tiger’s response to this. Lonato turns to him with a smile, and asks if he’d like to be his son.

Ashe, laughing from shock and joy, immediately accepts.

*~*~*

Hubert comes back to himself slowly, painfully. Every inch of his body is burning as though he were set aflame.

“Ah. You are still alive, then. I was uncertain you had survived.”

Hubert doesn’t recognize the voice, and it takes him a moment to remember where he is and why. He sits up agonizingly slowly, his body refusing to listen to him properly.

It worked, he’s certain of that much. But something went wrong, he’s fairly sure. He doesn’t think it’s supposed to hurt this much.

“Thank you. I really ought to be going now.”

“You must be careful,” the old beorc warns.

Hubert only nods before stepping out of the old man’s home. He stretches his wings, and makes to take off.

He falls. Not far, but his body is still burning and hitting the ground does nothing to help. He takes far longer than he should to get back up, to stand steady on his feet. His wings fold to his back in shame, because they’re useless now, aren’t they? He sighs.

He begins what is sure to be a long walk, and reminds himself that he would sacrifice so much more than flight for his lady.

*~*~*

Caspar doesn’t understand why his father is suddenly so insistent on him cutting off his friendship with Linhardt. The heron is nice, even if he doesn’t come across as such. And even though he burned the tiger, he fixed it, so it’s not a big deal. And it was an accident, Caspar knows Linhardt would never hurt him on purpose.

Linhardt was crying when Caspar woke up that morning. Linhardt never cries. Caspar has only seen him cry that one morning after the incident, lying bruised and broken in Caspar’s arms. And Caspar, despite every bone in his body wanting to get out of bed and run and play, held him close and whispered reassurances he can only hope the heron listened to.

He doesn’t want to stop being friends with Linhardt. He doesn’t have any other friends. Neither of them do. So he ignores his father’s orders and keeps trying to convince Linhardt to do the same.

Caspar’s father starts giving him training to do each morning. A certain amount of pushups, running so many laps around the yard, and then sparring.

When Caspar is finally starting to get Linhardt to feel comfortable again, his father decides that the heron has to train with him. And Linhardt has no choice but to accept, even though his body is too frail for Caspar’s vigorous routine.

Caspar will never understand how Linhardt lasts as long as he does. But when the frail boy collapses after a few laps, Caspar is at his side in an instant.

“Lin? Are you okay?” He helps the heron onto shaky feet.

“Not really, no,” Linhardt pants. “I’m… debating setting your father on fire.”

Caspar laughs, and then helps Linhardt walk out of the way and into a corner where no one will bother them. They fall gracelessly into a heap on the ground, where Linhardt leans into the bulky tiger and closes his eyes.

“Sleep well, Linhardt.”

*~*~*

Petra doesn’t know why she’s being sent to Garreg Mach, but she thinks it’s probably preferable to staying here. She agrees to travel with the imperial princess and her loyal servant. Even knowing Petra was a hostage, a prisoner, they treated her well while she stayed with them.

She reaches the carriage set to take her to Enbarr and climbs inside hesitantly. She could just as easily have gone on foot, but the people of Fodlan are strange and easily upset. She does not wish to incur their anger.

The journey doesn’t take long, of course. It takes longer than it would have taken for Petra to go on foot, but that doesn’t seem to matter to whoever is in charge of this arrangement.

Edelgard herself is waiting for Petra when she arrives. She finds her eyes drawn to white wings she could have sworn used to be dark brown. Hubert isn’t by her side, much to Petra’s surprise. She could’ve sworn the raven never left his lady alone.

“Petra. It’s lovely to see you.” There’s strain in Edelgard’s voice, she can’t help noticing. “Hubert should be back soon. Make yourself at home.”

“I have gratitude,” Petra says with a bow, smiling at her… friend might be a stretch. Acquaintance, perhaps. “You are looking different from when I last was seeing you.”

“A lot has happened between then and now,” is Edelgard’s sharp response. Her features soften again, and she sighs. “My apologies for snapping at you. These past months have not been pleasant.”

“I have understanding,” Petra nods. “You have great pain. You have kindness for me. Please be letting me have kindness for you.”

Edelgard smiles, though it does not reach her eyes. Her eyes remain dark and pained, shrouded in something Petra has no desire to understand. She suspects her desires won’t matter, and she’ll have to understand anyway. This is the way things often are. Petra sniffs the air and frowns at the strange, slightly sour stench coming off Edelgard. She knows the imperial princess would be clean and bathed, so there is something else going on here.

“Are you hungry, Petra? I can have a meal prepared for you.” Edelgard seems uneasy, and Petra chooses to humour her.

“I do have some hunger. I would be liking that greatly.” She bows slightly, lowers her ears and lets her tail droop in deference to the supposedly stronger eagle. Edelgard’s wings, previously held wide and stiff at her sides, fold back slightly in response. An exchange without words. Edelgard is Petra’s superior here, and finds comfort in knowing Petra understands it to be as such.

“Follow me then. I will send a guard to wait for Hubert,” Edelgard says softly.

Petra meets wary glances at her with fierce eyes and confidence, though she is certain to keep her posture docile. She would not want to upset Edelgard, especially with that strange darkness behind her eyes and that unfamiliar scent Petra is certain is not natural.

She is seated in the overly extravagant dining hall, which she does not fully understand. Dining halls in Brigid are often messy, and rarely have any item within that doesn’t serve a purpose. But here, there are candles burning in a huge silver chandelier (probably not real silver, though many nobles here do like to brag of such things) and small custom made cups along the length of the table. Petra doesn’t see the purpose of having that many candles, but who is she to bring up such things?

“Wait here. I will go ask the chefs to begin preparing you a meal.”

Edelgard leaves the room, and Petra immediately feels her shoulders relax. She has no hatred for Edelgard, but the eagle is overbearing, and seems to be agitated even without Petra saying a word.

Petra eats her meal in silence, all the while contemplating what’s wrong with Edelgard. Maybe there’s nothing wrong, and Petra just never knew her as well as she thought. But the strange scent that clings to the imperial princess is highly concerning to the wolf who once considered her a friend. She won’t pry into imperial affairs, but Petra can’t help but worry.

*~*~*

Dedue worries. He is always worrying, about Duscur, about Dimitri. Now, however, he worries about himself.

Well, less about himself, but more about everyone who chooses to speak with him. Dimitri especially, of course. The crown prince saved him, and Dedue isn’t foolish enough to believe there will be no consequences. Dedue is a heron of Duscur, and the people of Duscur are hated. He is hated. But Dimitri stands beside him anyway, and that is worrying to him.

Dimitri can’t afford to lose the support of his people over something as foolish as choosing Dedue as a retainer. But there’s nothing Dedue can do but remain a loyal servant, because being anything more or anything less would bring only more hatred upon his lord.

He can see his lord hurting. There’s nothing he can do. Everyone Dimitri loved fell in Duscur, and it makes Dedue feel sick. His people are responsible for this. Or maybe they aren’t. He doesn’t know, and that’s what hurts the most.

He was never anyone important back home. Just another person living out another life. He didn’t know about the death of the king. He knew only after the army came and set fire to homes and trampled innocent people beneath iron-clad feet. Feet the winged people of Duscur ought not to have been trampled by. But seeing flames devour your home does things to a person.

And then there was Dimitri, with his burdened body and wide blue eyes that matched Dedue’s wings. And he saved some of them. Begged and fought for their lives. Dedue had already lost his family at that point. But Dimitri’s pained eyes gave him purpose. A reason to fight. A person to fight for.

Dedue stands by his lord’s side and waits for orders, just as he always will.

*~*~*

Byleth thinks they probably ought to hate the name Ashen Demon. But they see no problem with it. Their skin is pale as ash anyway, and the scales that dot it like freckles don’t do anything to make them look natural.

They kill for the first time, and they feel nothing. They never feel anything. They know they should, their father is always trying to ask in such a way that it doesn’t come across as what it is but they know. Even if they can’t feel things for themself, they can see the meaning behind such a lie.

They never speak, but everyone always seems to know exactly what they want to say. Their father understands when they look him in the eyes and wish they could get their lips to form the words to tell him what they are. He holds them and whispers assurance that he will always accept them.

They feel nothing. No fear, no relief, no joy. Just the knowledge that yes, this works. They have explained sufficiently, even without words. Words are unneeded.

Byleth counts their gold in the dark and wonders if they’ll remember this later. They think they will. They can never tell, though. Their memory is unreliable at best.

They’re pretty certain they will remember what they are, of course. They don’t think they could forget that much.

*~*~*

It’s more than a little surprising to any onlookers to see Hubert von Vestra stumbling through the streets of Enbarr like a drunkard. It’s especially surprising when he collapses on the ground. Dorothea really shouldn’t be surprised that one of the Mittelfrank divas scooped him up off the street and into the theatre. Several of the performers would describe him as tall, dark and handsome, and it’s not just women making such remarks.

Dorothea, being one of the few members of the opera company even remotely versed in medicine and magic, finds herself tasked with watching over the man until he leaves. He’s burning up, though he shows few signs of illness other than the fever. She can’t claim to understand what’s happening to him, but she stands over him and sings to him anyway, because that’s all she can really do. She sings and sings until her voice is hoarse and the magic of the galdrar won’t come to her anymore.

She’s sent out of the room when they finally convince a bishop to come look at the raven.. She finds herself on stage while the bishop attends to their guest, her song filling the audience with life and letting them leave with smiles on their faces. She puts up with the flirting and the comments, smiles and laughs and blushes as appropriate. She’s mastered dealing with the crowds, and they love her all the more for it. Her wings might not be the glowing white of nobles’ wings, but they have earned her quite a few stares, and requests to touch them. She always declines. Tonight is no exception.

She flirts and sings until she can’t stay on her feet, and she goes to bed. It bothers her, being here. She loves the attention, revels in it even, but she hates the way they look at her. She’s heard a beorc man point her out to his friend as a show animal, seen the disapproval on noble faces at her common status. Seen her own father look at her with lustful eyes.

She decides then and there that she will do whatever it takes to get out of here, if only for a while. And, well… it’s not too difficult to convince a few nobles to get her into Garreg Mach’s Officers Academy. After all, it only takes a few minor beorc nobles, maybe the kind who see her as something exotic and beautiful.

When she returns to the opera house with a number of envelopes containing recommendations to get her into the academy, she feels filthy. But if it’ll get her out of here, she has to believe it’s worth it.

She finds one more note pinned to her door. A hastily scrawled thank-you letter, unsigned. But Dorothea knows who it’s from. How could she not? The only one to be so desperate to return to the imperial heir’s side would be a von Vestra.

*~*~*

Edelgard stands at the gates waiting for Hubert. And when the raven returns, escorted by a bishop, she welcomes him into her arms, into her wings, and she feels the heat radiating from his skin. She doesn’t know what he’s done, but she knows he is hurting, and she knows she has to fix that.

The bishop fills her in on how Hubert was found at the Mittelfrank Opera House, burning to the touch and murmuring her name in bouts of fitful sleep. She takes her retainer inside with a nod, and guides him to his room. He smiles at her, that damn smile that says whatever he set out to do, he’s done it. She stands in front of him and sighs.

“Hubert, what did you do?” she asks, concerned and afraid. He takes her hand in his and he mutters words she can’t quite understand, and the darkness at the edges of her world fades away, retreats to the furthest corners of her mind where it lurks, waiting. “Hubert…”

She looks to him, but he has fallen backwards onto his bed and into sleep. She sighs and brushes strands of sweat-soaked dark hair out of his face before she leaves the room with a thousand thoughts spiralling out of control.

Petra is standing outside the room, ears lowered and tail swishing slightly across the floor. Edelgard notices the way she lowers her stance further when the eagle steps out.

“Petra? Why are you standing here?”

“He has smell of spirit,” Petra growls. “I have worry for his healthiness.”

“He smells like what?” Edelgard looks to Hubert’s room, her concern for him spiking.

“Spirits. Beorc often have dealing with them.”

Edelgard’s blood runs cold when she realizes just what Hubert has done.

“He became a spirit charmer.”

“I do believe that is what they are being called.”

The imperial princess hopes that Hubert will make it through whatever he’s done to himself in an attempt to help her. Unfortunately, her hopes aren’t that high.

*~*~*

The night before they leave for Garreg Mach is stormy.

It’s fitting, in a way. That the last night they spend beneath their fathers’ roofs is filled with lightning and thunder and the steady rhythm of rain on the windows. Linhardt lies curled into Caspar’s chest, wings surrounding both of them like a blanket, and yet they both lie awake, wondering.

Caspar wonders if they’ll still be the same when they get there. There’s no reason they wouldn’t be, but there will be people there who aren’t as familiar as the servants or the lords of their houses, nobles with high expectations and commoners looking up to them. Caspar has never worried about how people saw him before. But now, it’s all he can think about.

“I’m tired, Caspar,” Linhardt mumbles, and Caspar thinks the heron is going to leave it at that and go to sleep, but he continues, “but I can’t seem to fall asleep.”

“Neither can I,” Caspar admits, and Linhardt shifts slightly, sitting upright and rubbing his eyes, wings draped around his shoulders like a fluffy coat.

“We aren’t even going to arrive for another week or so,” Linhardt sighs. “Even so, I keep thinking about Garreg Mach. There’s architecture there I’d love to study, but…” the heron draws in on himself. “I think I’m anxious. I keep thinking about the danger and the fact that there will be knights there who don’t mind killing and have killed before. What if I do something wrong and they set the knights on me?”

“I won’t let them hurt you,” Caspar promises, and he pulls Linhardt back into his chest and runs careful claws through unusually tangled hair. “If you do something wrong, I’ll be right there with you. And we’ll run together. Or fight together. Whichever one seems smartest to you.”

Linhardt chuckles. “You’ll fight no matter what I say.”

“Not when it comes to life or death. That’s a promise.” And Caspar means that, with every shred of life he has. He will protect Linhardt, even if it means running away. And even if it means dying.

A flash of lightning illuminates the room, and he swears he hears Linhardt _laughing_ when he screams. He finds he doesn’t mind much.

*~*~*

Bernadetta didn’t expect to wake up in a bag on her way to goddess knows where, but she doesn’t think she minds as long as she doesn’t have to get out of said bag. She finds it quite comfortable actually, when you get past the bumping and jostling. She is very much okay with this.

Well, she’s not, but if she pretends that she is maybe she can convince herself. The bag smells faintly of fish, and even more faintly of vegetables that a beorc or a different laguz wouldn’t be able to pick up. Probably a bag that’s been reused for a few things, then. She wonders if this is the first time it’s been used to transport a live person. Probably. She really hopes it is because if it isn’t then whoever was last stuffed in this sack was stuffed in among so much fish or vegetables that it hid their scent from her sensitive nose. Which means that they were hiding the person having been there, which means they might have killed them, and oh, Bernie, what are they going to do to you?

She screams as they dump her unceremoniously onto the ground, and she looks up at… oh no. Please, goddess, no. But she recognizes those buildings, how could she not? She’s been dumped onto the ground not far from Garreg Mach Monastery.

Someone drags her roughly to her feet, and Bernadetta squeaks in terror. She wishes she could have woken up sooner. She might have had a chance at escaping that way. Stupid, stupid Bernie! Now she’s being dragged along by one of her mother’s servants all because she happened to be a heavy sleeper. The monastery is huge and imposing and Bernadetta just knows that it’s going to be awful. She wants to go home, even if home is the constant fear of her father deciding to come berate her, or the silence of loneliness. She’d rather that to being enrolled in a military academy, which is clearly what her father has done.

She trembles fearfully as they approach, certain the archbishop of the church is going to come out and see her and laugh at her pitiful face and voice and everything. But when she sees the archbishop, she freezes for an entirely different reason.

She’s heard Lady Rhea is generous and kind, but harsh when need be. A gentle, guiding hand that can so easily be turned to a fist when her guidance is refused. But here, in her presence, it’s hard to imagine Lady Rhea being anything but gentle. The soft, smooth hand that lays itself in Bernadetta’s is far too dainty to inflict harm.

The archbishop smiles and welcomes her to Garreg Mach, tells her she’s the first student to arrive, she’ll have plenty of time to adjust to life at the monastery. Bernadetta finds herself lost in the softness of that voice, watching the way Lady Rhea’s lips form words as though she might one day be able to learn for herself how to speak with such gentleness.

Bernadetta still finds herself making a noise of fear whenever the archbishop turns to her. No amount of softness is enough to keep her from being afraid. But Rhea is smiling, and that’s nice, at least. It’s better than harsh reprimands and harsher hands.

She’s surprised when Lady Rhea leads her to a small room furnished with a bed and desk, where a vase of flowers sits blooming brightly. The window lets sunlight filter in, and the first thing Bernadetta does is draw the curtains.

“Your mother informed me of your situation,” the archbishop speaks as easily as breathing, just as calm and simple. “You will be safe here, I promise you.”

“U-um, thank you,” Bernadetta squeaks.

“Please make yourself comfortable,” Rhea says with a small bow of her head, and then Bernadetta is blessedly alone in a room that is supposedly hers.

She sits alone and finds a bag of some of her belongings sitting on the bed. A needle and thread, a few rolls of fabric. A paintbrush and canvas, and a handful of different paint colours. Tucked into a pocket is a scrap of paper, a letter from her mother filled with apologies and promises that Garreg Mach will be better than home. Will be a new home, if that’s what Bernadetta desires. She sighs and pokes the scrap back into the pocket.

She dumps the rolls of fabric on the floor and shoves the bag under the bed. She’ll finish dealing with this later. Right now, she is going to do a bit of embroidery.

*~*~*

Felix opens the door to his father’s study without a second thought, and demands the old man enroll him in the Officers Academy. Rodrigue seems to be desperate enough for his son’s respect that he agrees without argument.

The messenger that Rodrigue chooses to deliver the message is a sweet young beorc with a pegasus who promises swiftness. Felix makes sure to pay her a bit extra. She’s a sweet girl, and she doesn’t offer mock sympathies for Glenn like everyone else does. She sets off and Felix knows she was a good choice, with the speed of her mount.

He takes Glenn’s blade from its place on the mantel. It doesn’t matter if its old wielder is dead, it’s a good blade. It doesn’t deserve to rust and gather dust in the manor just because it belonged to someone who isn’t there to hold it. Besides, Felix is more than a stranger. The sword was his brother’s and he has the right to take it up in vengeance.

The rabid prince will be there too, won’t he? Felix hopes so, hopes he’ll have a chance to cut down that beast on the battlefield. That thing wearing an old friend’s skin is not fit to call itself a laguz. Sooner or later it will give up on walking on its hind legs, and Felix will be there to tell everyone he told them so.

The thing that used to be Dimitri stole his brother from him. Stole Glenn’s wings to blanket himself in. And Felix watched him do it again, tear the wings from a fleeing hawk clean off their body with nothing but his bare hands and brush bloodied fingers over russet feathers while muttering like a madman.

Felix is hurting. He is burning with fury and it’s spilling over, he wants to scream but he doesn’t know what to say. So he broods silently and doesn’t let himself show that anything is wrong.

The messenger’s return a mere day later with Archbishop Rhea’s approval is all Felix needs to push the feelings further down and stand proud and resilient against their onslaught.

Another handful of gold is slipped her way.


	3. But inside the beast still grows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks once more to laguz bro like god I love you???

Claude is confused when he’s told he is to take a carriage to Garreg Mach. He’s used to travelling by foot, or by wyvern. He’d never even seen a carriage before arriving in Fodlan. Almyra has no use for them, content just to run in packs when travelling over ground. On the bright side, the carriage is spacious enough to accommodate Claude’s antlers, unlike just about everything in Almyra, which was built only to accommodate the wolves. And his mother never had difficulty with it, her own antlers nonexistent.

He met his grandfather briefly. The man had antlers that sat on his head like a crown, and he looked at Claude and smiled without malice, unlike everyone else whose eyes fell upon him. The man had gently touched Claude’s antlers, touch light as a feather, and breathed a sigh.

The carriage doesn’t slow until nightfall, at which point it stops and Claude is instructed to climb out. He makes sure to thank the horses for their hard work. Even if they are animals, they are worthy of his respect, and if there’s one thing Claude has kept close to his heart from Almyra it’s showing respect to those who earn it. Most things about him are lies or half-truths, but when he expresses respect, it is always genuine. Almyra is no place to bow and grovel to those who haven’t earned it.

Apparently, Fodlan is different, expecting him to kneel and lick every noble’s boots just because they were born in a cushy manor or palace. Nobility in Fodlan is given, not earned. When brought into House Goneril’s manor, Claude offers nothing more than a slight dip of his head.

It’s here that he meets Hilda, bubbly and overwhelming in her honesty and intensity. She tells him she’s going to Garreg Mach too, says they might as well be friends, and offers a hand to shake. Claude obliges, of course, because he might have been raised by people this place considers savages, but even savages have some manners.

“Is your hair naturally pink?” is the first question out of Claude’s mouth, and the girl laughs.

“I’ll leave that up to you to figure out!” she winks at him, and he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he’s going to get along just fine with this girl. “Since you asked me a question, I get to ask you one. Are your antlers naturally gold?”

The answer is yes, but something in the way she asks implies that this is abnormal, so he does what he does best. He dances around the topic like the dancers he’s seen on bright nights dancing around a bonfire with flowing silks and dangling golden jewellery echoing their movements like ghosts against the flame.

“Is it normal to ask someone about the colour of their antlers during the first conversation? I would think you’d at least invite me to tea first.”

It gets a laugh out of Hilda, loud and bright and cheery. “You got me there. So, my _deer_ Claude, would you come to tea with me?”

It’s Claude’s turn to laugh now, at the joke he’s certain he would have made, were he ever able to. “Of course,” he says with a wink, and Hilda’s grin doesn’t falter for a moment.

They do have tea, though Hilda is only able to convince her father to give them a small amount of chamomile. Despite the strength of her build, the tiger pours him a cup with all the grace of a heron. Claude must admit to being impressed. She pours herself a glass with the same gentleness no one Claude has met before her would be able to muster, and sips as daintily as a bird alights on a branch.

Hilda is interesting company. Her build is strong and lithe, though she claims she is “a delicate flower” and “unfit for the battlefield”. Claude finds this incredibly amusing, considering tiger laguz are known for their strength and bulk. Though he supposes she has a slimmer build than most of the tigers he’s seen.

Claude’s experience with laguz other than the wolves of Almyra is limited to his mother, the bodies brought back from battle as trophies, and the rare prisoners. He’s seen herons passing by, but they never interacted with anyone, and when he asked why he was told only that they had an agreement with this tribe of herons. He did not question it further, knowing better.

Hilda is a welcome change from the angry, bound tigers snarling at him, and an especially welcome change from empty eyes staring at him from empty bodies. She is smiles and bubbles and warmth. He’s happy when she tells him she’s going with him to enrol in the Officers Academy. He might not be sure he can trust her, not yet, but he knows she’ll be refreshing company. And if there’s one thing Claude is fond of, it’s refreshing company.

*~*~*

Sylvain finds he enjoys being crammed into a carriage with two of his best friends on a trip to an academy he isn’t entirely certain he wants to go to. Sure, Felix won’t stop grumbling and sulking, and Ingrid is silent and still as death, but at least it’s them. At least they’re together.

He kind of wishes Dimitri were here too, but Felix bristles at the mere mention of the crown prince, and Sylvain might do his best to appear insensitive and stupid but despite these efforts he still decides not to bother the raven. He knows Felix will only snap and shout.

Ingrid doesn’t say a word, even when Sylvain does his best to prompt her to. He flirts with her, he runs his fingers through her hair, he wraps his tail around her waist. Her only reaction is to shift away or glare. Not a sound from her lips.

The ride is tense. Felix has changed, and it shows even more now than ever. Only a year ago he would have cried at the tension and the silence, been wrapped in Ingrid’s wings and lulled into security by Sylvain’s soft purring. But now he sits stiff and straight, a sword strapped to his side. Glenn’s sword, if the scent is anything to go by. Glenn’s scent is dampened by the time since it last sat in his hand, but it’s strong enough to recognize.

Ingrid has changed too, he notes. She’s still the same underneath, but older, sadder. She’s seen more and hurt more. She sits stiff as a board beside him, wings folded tightly to her back. He wishes she would relax. He wishes Felix would relax. But it seems Sylvain is the only one to have retained the ability to be calm. He supposes it’s all a front anyway, he’s just as tense and nervous as his friends underneath his perfectly crafted mask of laid back flirtiness. He wonders if they can see through it. He’s never told them how many lies he’s living, how many lies he’s told them in the time they’ve spent together. He worries that they’ll react poorly, and obviously they will. Felix will call him a monster stealing Sylvain’s body, much like he has with Dimitri. Ingrid will look at him with quiet disapproval that somehow hurts so much worse than words.

Sylvain combs his fingers through Felix’s feathers. The raven freezes for a moment and Sylvain can feel the fear radiating from him. It takes only a few moments for Felix to relax, fortunately, and Sylvain gently grooms his friend’s feathers into a semblance of order. Ingrid was more than a little surprised the first time Sylvain asked her to let him groom her feathers. He remembers her asking him how someone as messy-looking as him had such a strong desire to keep things neat. His excuse was, and always will be, that it’s a cat thing. (It isn’t. It’s just a Sylvain thing.)

The ride is far longer than Sylvain wants it to be, and judging by the way Felix’s complaints get more and more frequent and Ingrid’s stoic stillness gives way to uncomfortable shifting, it’s too long for them too. The silence is suffocating, and Sylvain feels like he’s going to choke on it. His tail lashes restlessly.

“I could be there by now if I’d just flown,” Felix huffs, crossing his arms and glaring out the window as if the slowly moving landscape had personally offended him. “This is a waste of time.”

“If you flew the whole way to Garreg Mach, your wings would probably give out from the exertion,” Ingrid says calmly, the only tell to her impatience being the way she flexes her wings briefly. “And we’d be leaving Sylvain behind. Although that would probably be for the best.”

“Hey!” Sylvain feigns offence, dramatically placing a hand over his heart. “How could you say such a thing about your best and most handsome friend?”

The small sound of amusement that comes from Felix and the upward twitch of Ingrid’s lips bring a grin to Sylvain’s face. He wants to keep going, to keep teasing and keep joking and keep his friends smiling. But he’s feeling just as cramped and impatient as the other two, and he will probably go mad if he has to put in effort to keep his friends happy on top of that.

Fortunately for him, Felix chips into the teasing. “You might be my best friend, but you’re far from the most handsome.”

This in turn catches Ingrid’s full attention. “Well, who’s the most handsome then? You can’t just drop something like that and not elaborate, Felix!”

The friendly bickering continues, and Sylvain sees the smiles gracing his friends’ previously stoic faces and lets a genuine smile onto his own. Their arrival at Garreg Mach is still a ways away, and they have time to waste.

*~*~*

Hubert is fairly certain he has a fever. It’s one of the few things he’s able to fully process through the way the world is burning cold against his skin. Maybe it would have been better to find a different solution to Edelgard’s condition, but he’s here now, burning alive and freezing to death all at once.

It felt just a little better at one point, his hands gripping Edelgard’s and her eyes wide and confused and so much clearer than they’ve been in a while. He could see through the visions dancing behind his eyes, if only briefly.

He thinks he feels her wings around him, and he puts his hands on her chest and pulls on the energy that threatens to eat him alive, casts the spell he created to keep her sane long before this. And with the release of energy comes a breath of relief, brief though it might be. He opens his eyes and the pictures stop dancing for a moment, pull away and leave him a moment of clarity.

“Lady Edelgard. How are you feeling?”

Her face contorts and a thousand emotions pass over it at once before she answers, sharp and short. “I feel fine.”

“That is good. I apologize for any stress I may cause you in the next few days.”

“Hubert, what did you do?”

Hubert tenses. She sounds angry, but there’s a hint of something else in there, concern perhaps. “I became a spirit charmer in order to save you. I might not be in the best condition right now but I assure you I will be fine.”

“We’re going to Garreg Mach today,” Edelgard says, and Hubert frowns. “You’ve been really out of it for the past two weeks, if what I heard is true.”

“I… must admit, I wasn’t expecting this level of inconvenience.” Hubert sits up slowly, drawing his wings around himself. “I had expected to be back within a few days.”

“You were gone for almost a month, Hubert. I was worried.”

“Lady Edelgard…” He should tell her. He should admit he lost the ability to fly for her, but his throat closes up and his chest constricts because he knows she won’t approve.

“Rest, Hubert. I will be back for you when it’s time to go.”

He finds himself alone and vulnerable, shakily stretching his wings. They are weak, just like the rest of his body. Black feathers stick in all directions and Hubert doesn’t have the energy to fix it. He’s a mess, and he knows that. He moves his wings in the motions of flight, as though he were going to take flight. Even standing here and flexing his wings makes his muscles burn.

He pulls them around himself again and wonders what his father would think of him. Would he be proud of Hubert for sacrificing so much for his lady? Or would he be disappointed in his loss of flight?

Hubert stares at his reflection in a mirror, and something dark coiled in his chest lashes out. Hubert doesn’t move a muscle, doesn’t even twitch. The mirror shatters. Wide, wild green eyes stare at him from the shards of glass that litter his floor, and he wonders if this was the right choice. He has to believe it was. He’s frustrated and confused and his clothes and hair are slick with sweat. He’s still sweating, he thinks. He needs a bath.

He makes note of the black mark oher his heart, a coiled serpent with bared fangs. He’s sure this isn’t a typical marking of a spirit charmer. He’s even more sure that the black veins that ring it and reach for the rest of his body aren’t normal.

He’s done something wrong. He washes the filth off his body but the black remains, a brand marking him a fool. He invited spirits into his body, yes, but he didn’t expect spirits like this. His wings, soaked with water, fall limp at his sides, trailing heavily like a cloak of feathers. They ache. His entire body aches.

Edelgard finds him mere minutes later, desperately sweeping up shards of glass he never meant to shatter.

“We’re leaving. Petra is coming with us.”

Hubert feels almost relieved by the company of the wolf, for her presence will spare him some of Edelgard’s inevitable questioning. There are certain things not to be talked about in the presence of others, and Hubert hopes the glare he shoots Edelgard gives her the message that this is one of them. Hubert has no intentions of telling Petra exactly what he has done to himself, doesn’t even intend to admit the extent of the consequences to Edelgard. This is his problem, and his alone. He will deal with it.

He’s relieved that he won’t be travelling on foot, or worse, expected to follow Edelgard in flight. He isn’t ready to tell her he can’t fly. He isn’t ready to tell her how the action of merely stretching his wings is painful. Hubert follows her to the carriage they’re expected to take to Garreg Mach and wishes it weren’t so cramped. Petra settles beside Edelgard, and Hubert finds himself perched at the other side, uncomfortable in the Brigid princess’ presence. The way her ears and tail droop when she looks his way concerns him, but not enough to convince him to engage.

It doesn’t take long for Hubert’s mind to fall back into the fog and the visions, but it’s a welcome distraction from the stiff silence.

*~*~*

Linhardt sits behind Caspar and leans into the tiger, his wings instinctively folding around his only friend like a blanket. Caspar complains that he’s not going to be able to direct the horse properly with Linhardt’s wings in the way. The heron just groans with exaggerated annoyance and pulls his wings tight to his sides.

He wishes he could be sleeping right now, instead of clinging to Caspar’s body while riding on horseback to a place he’s still not entirely sure he wants to go to. Of course he wants to learn to better control his… gift. He wants to hone it, to learn to use it to heal Caspar’s wounds after a long battle. Of course he doesn’t want to be alone. As much as Linhardt will pretend to hate company, loneliness is so much worse. The thoughts assaulting his mind, the feelings that gnaw at his chest. It’s frustrating. Spending time with people is tiring, but at least they’re easier to deal with than whatever it is that’s lurking in his own mind.

His wings feel awkward and out of place. He wants to wrap them around his friend, but Caspar will only complain. He can’t wrap them around himself, as much as he’d like to. His arms get in the way of properly wrapping himself in their warmth. He could fold them to his back, but it feels awkward. He understands why no one in his family is particularly fond of horses. His wings are stiffly held at his sides, partially folded, and he swears some of the horses keep giving them a strange look.

“Don’t create any unnecessary resistance for the horse to deal with, von Hevring,” a voice from somewhere to the side snarls, and Linhardt’s wings snap close to his back in response. The voice belongs to Caspar’s father, because why would it not.

“Sorry,” Linhardt grumbles, but he’s really not overly sorry at all. It’s not his fault he was never taught to ride a horse, or how to hold his wings when travelling with a group of tigers who mostly hate his guts.

There’s tension in the air, and were Linhardt as good at dealing with people as his father, he might have been able to clear at least some of it away. As it is, Linhardt sits tense and uncomfortable in the oppressive atmosphere.

Caspar speeds his horse up with a simple flick of the reins and Linhardt finds himself gripping tightly to the stronger boy’s torso for fear of falling from the mount. He curses his frail body for the thousandth time, knowing full well he could keep up with the tigers on foot if only he wouldn’t grow so tired so quickly. His head feels a little clearer further away from the others, and some of the tension lifts from Linhardt’s shoulders.

“You feeling alright, Lin?” Caspar’s concern is touching, but unnecessary.

“I’m fine, Caspar. Just tired.” Linhardt yawns and drapes his wings over himself as he leans into Caspar’s body. “You won’t let me fall off, right…? I might just take a nap.”

“I don’t think you should take a nap on horseback.” Despite the truth and wisdom of the statement, Caspar sounds uncertain. “You would probably fall off back there, and there’s no way I’m letting you sit in front of me with your big stupid wings!”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Am not!”

Linhardt drops it, another yawn leaving his lips. “The amount of tension there is around your father is incredibly exhausting. I’m not certain I’ll be _able_ to stay awake much longer.” Linhardt nuzzles his way into the crook of Caspar’s neck, sighing in frustration. “I don’t want to be asleep for this entire journey. But I really am incredibly tired.”

“Your wings are getting in my way again.”

The heron pulls his wings back to his sides with a frown. Caspar never minded their presence until now, and Linhardt supposes it’s understandable, but no less frustrating. He doesn’t want to be here, riding a horse, unable to do anything or even just nap. He’s tired. His friend makes a good pillow. But each time he drifts towards rest, his wings fall around Caspar and the tiger wakes him with complaints and questions.

The most common question is “Are you okay?” and Linhardt doesn’t know how to reply. Yes, he’s okay, but he’s tired and bored out of his mind and his lower half aches from riding for so long. Of course, Caspar doesn’t think it’s been long at all, really. And Linhardt knows his body is weak anyway and that’s probably what’s wrong with him in general here. He just wants to take a nap.

At nightfall, when Linhardt finally steps off the horse, he stumbles and falls immediately, wings flaring in surprise. He wouldn’t have expected his legs to hurt quite this much. Caspar laughs and offers him a hand, which Linhardt gladly accepts. They set up bedrolls and several of the Bergliez tigers laugh at the sight of Linhardt trying to tuck his wings into the blankets. He decides that, other than Caspar, all Bergliez are assholes. It takes him little time to fall asleep when he finally manages to worm his way into the thin blankets.

He wakes up aching and cold. He decides he isn’t fond of travelling like this. Caspar is his usual energetic self, and Linhardt is forced once again to ride behind the blue boy. He just hopes this journey doesn’t take much longer. He isn’t sure he can take another night on the ground, at least not like this.

*~*~*

Dorothea’s arrival at Garreg Mach is devoid of fanfare or announcement. She simply lands and half folds her wings, walking up to the gatekeeper who seems to be talking to all the new students as they arrive. Dorothea watches as a purple haired beorc steps out of a well-decorated carriage with his head held high. Clearly a noble. She watches the gatekeeper grow steadily more uncomfortable in his presence, and decides to step in.

She draws their attention immediately, as she’s learned to over her life. She catches the way the beorc’s eyes drift to her wings, and shifts them just enough for the soft feathers to shift and ripple with the muscle.

“Should your wings not be white?” the purple noble says, and Dorothea knows at that moment that she hates this man. “You ought to clean them.”

“Shouldn’t you mind your own damn business?” she snaps, standing as tall and intimidating as she can. “I might not be a noble, but that’s no excuse to call me dirty. You disgust me.”

The beorc huffs at that. “You’re a commoner then. You have no right to boss I, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, around.”

“Yeah, yeah. Are you finished? Because I have an academy to get into.”

Lorenz goes red and storms off, the gatekeeper breathing a sigh of relief. “Sorry about that, miss. So, you’re enrolled in the Officers Academy?”

Dorothea is able to get in with ease after showing him the notes from the nobles recommending her. She still feels somewhat filthy using them, but it would have been nearly impossible to get in without them. She feels slightly out of place in the shining halls, until she sees the archbishop standing serene and beautiful, welcoming students in droves. The woman looks over Dorothea’s letters and smiles and tells her she will be assigned a room within the day. Dorothea doesn’t have many belongings to unpack. She doesn’t mind waiting.

She knows Manuela is a teacher here. The first thing she wants to do is speak with the older diva. She owes the woman her life. If Manuela hadn’t taken her off the streets and into Mittelfrank Opera House, she probably would be dead by now. Dead, or selling her body. Not that she hasn’t been selling her body at the opera house. She learned very quickly that some customers will pay a nice tip for time with her.

Manuela probably would not approve of her choices, but it doesn’t really matter. Dorothea doesn’t approve of her own choices, but survival is more important than dignity.

“Dorothea? Is that you?” Manuela’s arms open as she sways towards the young diva. “Why, I haven’t seen you in years! How wonderful to see you here.”

Dorothea accepts the hug, leaning in to reciprocate with wings and arms alike. Manuela immediately sets to grooming Dorothea’s wings, the two sitting in the infirmary and catching up. For a beorc, Manuela’s hands were always adept at combing through ruffled feathers. A few of the birds back in the opera house often lamented the woman’s depart, claiming no one else would ever help them preen quite so effectively. Dorothea forgot just how heavenly Manuela’s touch could be, and sighs in relaxation.

“I’ve still got it, hmm?” Manuela laughs when Dorothea just hums an affirmative. “I heard you were doing quite well in the opera company. A crowd favourite.”

“You could say that,” Dorothea shrugs. “Lots of them are just gross men though.”

Manuela sighs. “You’re preaching to the choir, sweetheart. There are very few people out there who actually appreciate opera. Just a bunch of sleazy nobles who want to see a woman with big tits sing to them about love.”

Their conversation continues in a similar fashion, and Dorothea finds comfort in Manuela’s informality. Dealing with as many nobles as she has recently, a harsher, more blunt way of speaking is more than welcome. Manuela tells her she hopes to get the Black Eagle house in her care, but the new professor will probably get first pick.

The new professor turns out to be a jumpy, ratty man, with hair greasier than some of the men Dorothea has… had dealings with. She doesn’t doubt, with the way he looks at her, that he would be one of her customers if he had come by before she left. Maybe he has been. She always made an effort not to remember their faces. He greets her shakily, nervously. She doesn’t trust him, not one bit.

She wanders the monastery until the sun is beginning to set and paint the sky rose gold. A knight takes her to her room and leaves her for the night. She takes in her surroundings with a deep breath.

It’s smaller than her room at the opera house, but much more comfortable. The room is mostly empty, but there is a bed, a mirror and a dresser. Dorothea decides she’ll have to go to town tomorrow, and buy herself some nice outfits. A uniform lies folded on the dresser, but she would like a few more options than just the plain black and gold.

The bed is the softest she’s ever been allowed to sleep in, and she drifts off with ease.


	4. Waiting, chewing through the ropes

Dedue is unsurprised to see Dimitri hiding the pain behind his carefully crafted mask. Dedue has done the same many times, crafted walls around his heart and shut out the darkness the world throws at him. Though it would be a lie to say the hatred for his people hasn’t slipped through the cracks. It hurts to be hated for nothing but his shape and colour.

“Dedue…”

“I am right here, your highness.”

The prince’s grip on Dedue’s arm is tight enough to be slightly painful, but the Duscur heron doesn’t mind. He is comfort for his lord, and nothing more. His wing raises to wrap around Dimitri’s shoulders.

“It is alright, Dedue. I apologize for concerning you.”

“I am your shield, your highness. Even here where there is no threat, I will protect you.”

The question in Dimitri’s eyes doesn’t need to be asked for Dedue to understand it. “From what?” And Dedue isn’t sure, isn't really sure he can protect his lord from things that aren’t there. He wants to wrap Dimitri in his wings and let the world wait for his lord to regain himself. But he learned so quickly that Dimitri is afraid of the embrace of wings.

Dedue stands beside his lord with one wing raised around his shoulders but never touching them, a shield against whoever stands behind them. That’s all he is, a shield, to be used until he breaks and needs to be set aside. He revels in the role where others would weep. It’s a true honour to serve Dimitri as he does. To most, it would be demeaning. To Dedue, it’s the most he’s ever been, probably the most he’ll ever be. It’s more than he ever would have dared hope for, and it would be disgraceful to everyone, especially to himself, if he were to fail at the most important task he ever had.

Some people tell him he takes this too seriously. He doesn’t understand how they can say such things with a straight face. His entire homeland was destroyed by Faerghus’ army, and he would be dead now if it weren’t for Dimitri. If he failed to protect his lord, or worse, chose to betray him, then Dedue would be forfeiting his life. And even though there is very little reason to at this point Dedue wants to live. He wants to learn about Fodlan, he wants to understand why the beorc and the laguz who live here are so tense with each other at times and friendly at others.

He wants to understand what crests are. Maybe not entirely, just enough to know why it’s so important that Dimitri has one. Why his strength is so necessary to a kingdom when Dimitri doesn’t want to fight.

Dedue has vowed to stay by Dimitri’s side, and that won’t change now, or ever.

*~*~*

Felix finds himself rather displeased about his room being sandwiched between the rabid prince and the Riegan boy. The two are probably the people he least wants to interact with here. The rabid prince for obvious reasons, and the Riegan because… well, simply put, he’s annoying.

He finds himself on edge in what’s supposed to be his space to unwind. The rabid prince is right next door. He’s right next door, and he could so easily step out of his own room and into Felix’s. If he weren’t so afraid of letting his friends know how terrified he was of the thing that used to be Dimitri, he would probably have asked Ingrid to switch rooms with him. Not that she would have agreed. She’s always been a stickler for the rules.

Felix tries to relax. Sylvain is on the other side of the rabid prince, and will be aware if anything happens. He tries to take comfort in that fact, but Sylvain is fickle, and counting on him would be an amateur mistake for him. Even with those damn sharp ears of his, Sylvain isn’t going to pause for one second to stop the monster that used to be their friend from tearing Felix’s wings from his body until it’s too late. And he doubts the Riegan on his other side will help him.

So, instead of sleeping, Felix climbs out the small window in his room and flies to the training grounds. He knows it won’t be long until he’s caught and sent back to his room, but he needs to work out just some of this tension. The continuous clacks and dull thuds of the wooden training swords against the dummies is rhythmic, Felix’s strikes vicious and precise. They would be lethal, were this a real person and not a dummy made of wood and straw and cloth. He discards the sword and switches to his fists.

A lot of laguz shun beorc weapons, and Felix can’t exactly blame them. Still, he swears by the sword. There’s nothing like the feel of the blade in his hands. Still, the freedom of fighting with fists and talons is a close second in terms of his favourite ways to fight.

His blows are stronger than any beorc’s, with or without the gauntlets some of his people swear by. The beorc might be the ones smithing them out of metal, but the design was first created by laguz. It’s just like the beorc to steal laguz designs and “improve” them.

Still, the wooden training gauntlets the monastery stocks are clearly of laguz make. Felix wonders how they found a capable craftsman out here. The town below the monastery appears to be populated by beorc. It doesn’t matter much to him. He doesn’t need the extra force behind his fists.

“Felix.”

He turns around, wings flared, fists raised. Panic floods his system for a moment before he realizes the voice belongs to Ingrid. She looks at him with concern as he lowers his wings and puts the training gauntlets back.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” he huffs, and he doesn’t miss the way Ingrid’s face falls.

“Why aren’t you?” she retorts. He doesn’t say a word. “It’s late, Felix. Why are you out here?”

“Training.”

“That’s not what I asked and you know it.”

Felix crosses his arms and folds his wings back. “I couldn’t sleep. Happy?”

“No. You’re worrying me, Felix. You’ve been acting strange ever since Glenn-”

“Don’t bring him into this!” Felix snaps, wings flaring. “He had nothing to do with this. Nothing. Leave me alone.”

He sees the hurt on her face, but he doesn’t stop to apologize. His eyes sting with tears and he flies towards his window before they can fall. He’s lucky to be able to get back into his room unnoticed. He knows, alone in the dark, everyone he knows would tell him to let himself cry. Felix doesn’t. The tears sting at his eyes and he blinks them away to the best of his ability.

There’s a knock at the door. Felix’s pacing must have alerted the rabid prince. His wings tense, his ears perk ever so slightly. He steps away from the door. It’s locked, but if that… _thing_ wants to get at him it can. He steps towards the window. The rabid prince can’t follow if he takes to the air.

“Felix, c’mon, let me in! I can hear you breathing in there.”

Felix registers distantly that the voice is not the rabid prince’s. Fear still courses through his veins, and he takes another step towards the window.

“Please, Felix. I just want to help.”

Hesitantly, he opens the door ever so slightly, revealing Sylvain’s frowning face. “What do you want.” It isn’t a question. Felix already knows the answer. But he has to fix that he’s showing weakness. His breaths are quick and desperate, though he tries to hide them. His eyes burn with unshed tears.

“Felix…” Sylvain is able to edge into his room embarrassingly easily. “It’s okay to cry, you know. You used to come to me crying all the time, but I haven’t seen you cry since, well… since that night.”

“Sylvain, please get out of my room.”

“I heard you leave.” Felix freezes, and Sylvain sighs. “I was worried. I sent Ingrid to look for you because I didn’t want to be the one to find you if you were hurt.”

There are too many feelings running through him to comprehend. “Get out,” Felix snarls, and Sylvain’s ears flatten to his skull as he steps back. “Get out!”

Sylvain leaves him alone, and even knowing Sylvain can probably hear, Felix cries.

*~*~*

Leonie is more than a little proud to be the only bird in the Golden Deer house when she meets them. They’re all misfits, between Claude’s unusually shaped ears and Marianne’s attempts to hide herself away in the corner. There are several beorc among them, much to Leonie’s annoyance. But to make up for Lorenz’ haughty attitude there’s Ignatz’ gentle shyness and Lysithea’s potent magic (which she was quick to demonstrate when Claude teased her). Marianne doesn’t show much of what she can do. There’s something ever so slightly off about the girl, in the way her eyes dart between everyone like a frightened animal and her hands tremble as they sit clasped over her heart.

Raphael is quick to suggest a feast to get to know each other, and no one finds it in them to argue. The large tiger runs off to ask the faculty about it, and Ignatz watches him go with sad eyes. Hilda is quick to ask if she can help Leonie preen, to which the hawk shrugs and sits down to let the tiger do her thing. Her hands are surprisingly gentle. Leonie suspects her wings will be looking much nicer than ever when she’s finished. Still, she refuses the oils Hilda claims to have purchased on the way. They’re unnecessary. Leonie has done just fine without them, and sees no reason to waste someone’s purchase.

Other than Lorenz and Marianne, the Golden Deer are rather friendly. Ignatz asks if she’ll model for a painting sometime. Claude just gives her an easygoing smile and jokes with whoever he can. Lysithea sits off to the side, but doesn’t hesitate to snipe at Claude when given the chance. It’s chaotic, but nice. Leonie thinks it’s almost like a band of mercenaries.

She doesn’t let herself be disappointed that she didn’t find Captain Jeralt here. He’s a busy man, and besides, she knows just as well as anyone else that he left the monastery without a trace years ago. And just because she’s seen him since then doesn’t mean she’s any more capable of tracking him than the knights of Seiros. Her slight hope that he would come back here was foolish, and she knows it.

She’s admittedly curious about what the rest of the Golden Deer can do. Especially considering they have the house’s namesake among them in the form of Claude and his shining golden crown of antlers. The Riegan heir doesn’t seem to realize just how important that is. There hasn’t been a real golden deer since the elite Riegan himself. Plenty of fakes, but nothing proven real. And Claude doesn’t seem the type to paint his antlers for attention.

To her surprise, the deer agrees to let Ignatz paint his antlers. The nervous beorc smiles brightly, and Leonie suspects that is the only reason Claude agreed. The small beorc is cute in a way Leonie can’t deny.

Hilda immediately sets her sights on getting Marianne to open up. The blue-haired beorc’s voice is so soft and shaky that Leonie feels bad for her just from listening to it. Something or someone has hurt this girl and Leonie is filled with an urge to protect her from anything else.

The Golden Deer remind Leonie of her family. Lorenz and Claude’s bickering, Marianne’s soft, short replies to Hilda’s questions, Ignatz’ gentle requests to pain each member, Lysithea’s determination not to be seen as a child, Raphael’s overwhelming, loud kindness… it all feels like siblings interacting. It’s comfortable and content, and Leonie thinks she won’t mind spending the next year with them. She feels ever so slightly out of place, but not enough to be uncomfortable.

Hilda is quick to pull Leonie into her conversation with Marianne. “Hey, Leonie, if you don’t mind me asking, are you a guy or a girl? It’s kinda hard to tell, if I’m being honest.”

“A girl,” Leonie replies, maybe a tad more sharply than intended. Hilda smiles reassuringly.

“Alright! Just didn’t want to mess up and call you a guy, y’know?” The pink tiger turns back to marianne. “Hey, do beorc use different nail polish? I’d like to paint your nails, they’re very lovely.”

“Oh, um, I don’t think so…” Marianne murmurs, offering her hands to Hilda and her cosmetics. “You, um… you don’t have to paint my nails…”

“Nah, I want to. I think this colour suits you, what do you think?” Marianne offers a small nod, and Hilda opens the bottle, brushing sky blue onto Marianne’s nails. “Oh, Leonie! I can do yours next if you want!”

“That’s alright. You don’t have to.” Leonie will admit the idea of having her nails painted is appeasing, but she doesn’t want Hilda to use up all of her probably expensive nail paint on her. “It’ll just come off when I’m working anyway.”

“That’s alright, I can buy more. Ooh, maybe Ignatz can help me make some!” Hilda’s bubbly presence is soothing in a strange way. “Hey, Lysithea! After I’m finished with Marianne and Leonie, do you want me to paint your nails too?”

“Uh, sure!” Lysithea smiles.

“You gonna paint my nails, Hilda?” Claude teases, but when Hilda genuinely offers to paint them he accepts, much to everyone’s amusement, and Lorenz’ shock.

“Claude- you are a _man,_” Lorenz sputters, and Claude laughs.

“And I’m confident enough in my manliness to get my nails painted!” Claude fires back. “Which you clearly aren’t!”

Lorenz sputters indignantly and even Marianne giggles softly. Lysithea absolutely _cackles,_ throwing her head back.

In the end, everyone leaves with nails painted various shades of the rainbow, with little golden patterns across each one.

*~*~*

Mercedes enters the Blue Lions classroom with Annette’s hand in hers. The tiny heron is excitedly chatting about any little thing, but she stops upon entering the classroom.

The Blue Lions all filter in quickly, and Mercedes is surprised by how many of them are laguz. A boy sits alone, the only beorc in the house. She’s somewhat pleasantly surprised to see a blue-winged heron of Duscur, though he seems to be standing beside Dimitri, who looks around with a fierce glare. Mercedes can sense the prince’s discomfort, and she decides it’s probably best not to approach.

She finds a fellow cat in the form of Sylvain, and they greet each other with some enthusiasm. There’s no more to their interaction than an introduction and a small amount of customary grooming. They move on after that, back to the group.

“Ooh, we should all introduce ourselves!” Annette suggests enthusiastically. “Like, our names and something we like!”

“That’s a great idea, Annie!” Mercedes smiles as warmly as she can. “You should go first.”

“My name is Annette!” the excitable heron grins. “I like baking with Mercie!”

Mercedes picks up there. “My name is Mercedes. I like telling ghost stories.” She gestures to the beorc to go next.

“Oh! Uh, my name is Ashe,” he stammers. “I like reading stories about knights.”

The raven who sits beside Sylvain huffs. Mercedes can sense his discomfort with the topic, and gestures for the Duscur heron to go next.

“I am Dedue,” he says quietly, his voice deep and soothing. “I enjoy gardening.”

“I’m Sylvain,” the other cat picks up, “and I’m single.” He winks, earning a strike over the back of the head from the hawk who sits with him. “Okay, okay.”

“My name is Ingrid,” the hawk says. “I like pegasi.”

She nudges the raven, who begrudgingly speaks. “My name is Felix, and I’d rather be sparring than talking.”

“You probably all know my name already,” Dimitri says sheepishly, and Felix _glares._

“No, enlighten us, your rabid highness,” the raven hisses, and Dimitri recoils.

“Hey!” Annette, bless her soul, cuts in before anything can go too far south. “We know your name, but why don’t you introduce yourself anyway? It’s more fun.”

“I’m Dimitri. I like cheese.” At the awkward silence, Dimitri continues. “It has a very nice flavour and texture.”

Mercedes claps her hands together to get everyone’s attention. “Well, now that we’ve all been introduced, why don’t we get to know each other a bit better?”

“Oh! We could play truth or dare!” Annette grins slightly evilly, and Mercedes can’t help but laugh. “No one has to do anything they’re uncomfortable with though! We just want to bond with each other, not make anyone upset.” Murmurs of agreement pass over the group, even Felix giving a small nod. “Great! Hmm, Mercie! Truth or dare?”

“Oh, Annie, you already know the answer to that. Dare, of course.”

By the end of their meeting time, everyone is comfortable in each other’s presence, which Mercedes is quite proud of. Felix and Dimitri still don’t get along, but Mercedes is sure there’s nothing she can do about that right now. She leaves hand in hand with Annette, who is very pleased with her ideas.

*~*~*

The Black Eagles class is chaotic. Ferdinand was lucky enough to find little Bernadetta on his way to the classroom, because she was planning to miss their first meeting. Which is unacceptable, especially for a noble.

Linhardt’s first action within the classroom was to introduce himself and announce his intent to nap, which Caspar seemed perfectly fine with, defending his friend from Edelgard’s scolding. Hubert has been standing at Edelgard’s shoulder since they came in. Bernadetta screamed at the sight of him and is now hiding in the corner, hiding herself behind a textbook to the best of her ability. Dorothea keeps glancing at Hubert, and has been for the past few minutes.

Much to Ferdinand’s relief, Petra seems to be mostly normal. Her understanding of Fodlan is limited, but she’s enthusiastic and earnest. Ferdinand respects her curiosity.

“This is a disaster,” Edelgard sighs. “Maybe we should just call it off early.”

“I’ve got it!” Dorothea cheers, startling Linhardt awake with her sudden shout. “Nicknames! We can give each other nicknames.”

“Nicknames?” Petra tilts her head. “I do not have knowing of this term.”

“It’s a name you call someone. Friends usually have them for each other.” Dorothea smiles. “And we’re all gonna be friends, right? So we should give each other nicknames.”

“Ah! I am liking this idea!” Petra says with a bright smile, and Ferdinand groans. So much for a normal person.

Dorothea points at him first, much to his exasperation, and announces with finality, “Ferdie.”

“You are not calling me Ferdie,” he says.

“I am liking the nickname Ferdie,” Petra says, and it’s too late for him. She’s just too childlike in her way of seeing things he takes as normal.

He lets the nickname slide, and Dorothea turns to Bernadetta. “How does Bern sound?”

“Oh!” Bernadetta squeaks, her voice resembling a mouse more so than the lion she is. “Um… that’s… really nice…!”

Dorothea’s eyes land on Edelgard and Ferdinand just knows this is not going to end well. Hubert is going to get angry, and someone just might get hurt or die.

“Edie,” Dorothea says pensively, nodding slowly.

“You are not to refer to Lady Edelgard by such a familiar title!” Hubert’s face contorts.

“Are you jealous, Hubert?” Edelgard teases, and Hubert’s expression goes to one of shock.

“Oh! Hubert can be having a nickname!” Petra is absurdly excited about this. “Hubie!”

Ferdinand can’t help laughing at the look on the raven’s face. He catches Edelgard giggling as well, and Caspar’s loud laughter is hard to miss. Even Linhardt has the tiniest smile on his face.

“Please do not call me Hubie,” he says quietly, though there’s no real threat to his voice for once.

“Why not, Hubie?” Dorothea leans forward, a smirk on her face. “You wouldn’t turn down Petra’s nickname, would you?”

“Well- no, I wouldn’t.” The defeat on Hubert’s face is reminiscent of Ferdinand’s own.

“It’s settled then. Hubie.”

“I did not agree to let _you_ call me by that name.”

Dorothea hums to herself, and Hubert’s eyes widen when she says, “Well, you do owe me. You said so yourself. So let this slide and we’ll call it even.”

Ferdinand wonders what interaction Hubert might have had with Dorothea, let alone what would make him tell her he owed her something. Linhardt seems to have the same thing on his mind, as he perks up and asks, “What does he owe you for?”

“Oh, well, that’s for Hubie to tell you,” Dorothea giggles. “He doesn’t owe me anymore, so he might just kill me if I tell you.”

“Understandable,” Linhardt yawns, lying back on his arms.

Ferdinand is about to press further, when Edelgard opens her mouth and announces that their time is up and everyone is free to go. Ferdinand thanks his sharp eyes for the way he catches Hubert slinking off with no further prompting, and decides he’s going to have to confront him about it later.

*~*~*

“Hubert.”

The raven freezes before he recognizes the voice as Lady Edelgard’s. He turns to her, nodding.

“Why did you owe Dorothea?” Edelgard asks, straight to the point as always.

“I assume the bishop who brought me to you informed you of where he found me, yes?” Hubert hopes that’s the case. He doesn’t want to explain to his lady how he ended up in an opera house.

“No. Where were you, Hubert? What were you doing?”

Hubert curses under his breath, flexing his wings nervously. “There was a… slight delay in my plans to return to you. I was in the Mittelfrank Opera House.”

“Why?” she asks, and Hubert’s brow furrows because try as he might, he really can’t remember how he got there. His memories are a smudge of feverish images and moments of something close to clarity where someone sang in a language that felt just slightly familiar but was foreign to him. He remembers hastily scribbling a note to the singer. It must have been Dorothea.

“Lady Edelgard, please…”

“Alright, Hubert. I’ll drop it for now, but I do expect an explanation at some point.”

Hubert dreads the point where Edelgard demands he explain.


	5. Who are you to change this world

Linhardt settles into the monastery somewhat easily. What he isn’t used to, at least not yet, is being woken by knocking at his door and a frustrated voice (typically Edelgard, though occasionally Hubert and Ferdinand have come to awaken him) barking orders for him to get up and go to class.

The atmosphere of the monastery is mostly positive, fortunately for him. He has somewhat more energy than he did at home, without being constantly weighed down by the heavy negative energy of his father. Linhardt doesn’t think he’ll ever understand how a heron could have such a negative presence. Then again, Dorothea has her own shreds of negativity clinging to her, so maybe it’s normal.

Unfortunately for Linhardt, Hubert’s presence is oppressively dark. Whenever the raven comes to wake him, it’s harder than usual to get himself out of bed. Which is saying something. It’s not Linhardt’s fault, and despite Hubert’s conviction that the heron hates him, Linhardt is actually somewhat fond of him. Hubert might be surrounded by darkness, but it’s not his. Linhardt knows how to see the difference between something that comes from someone and something that just surrounds them, and Hubert is not evil, no matter how hard he tries to convince everyone otherwise.

Caspar’s presence is just as bright and fiery as it always was, and the energy the tiger radiates almost cancels out the exhaustion constantly plaguing the heron. But there’s a lot of negativity in the Black Eagles classroom, and it’s exhausting. Bernadetta’s constant fear, Ferdinand’s seething envy, Edelgard’s carefully crafted mask of imperious authority. So, during class, Linhardt finds himself falling asleep over and over, and wondering how Dorothea manages to be so unaffected.

“Lin! Wake up, our teacher is here!”

Linhardt blinks groggily, his body still heavy and tired. “Oh?”

He feels more than sees the way Dorothea perks up at their teacher’s arrival, and combined with Caspar’s energy it gives him just enough wakefulness to rub the sleep from his eyes and look at the woman standing before them. She’s a beorc, and her brown hair is cut somewhat short. Her outfit is too revealing for Linhardt’s liking, but to each their own, he supposes.

Her name is Manuela, he quickly learns, and she’s here today to teach the class about white magic. Linhardt fights the sleepiness in his body and listens, because if there’s one thing he needs to learn it’s white magic. He doesn’t want to rely on desperate instinct should Caspar get hurt again. Should _he_ hurt Caspar again. He is afraid of the possibility. He’s avoided using fire magic as much as possible since the incident, but he’s still not completely in control of it.

“Now, in order to heal a severe injury, you will need to cast the spell multiple times,” Manuela is saying, pointing to diagrams and sigils on the chalkboard beside her. “Unless you have a higher level spell than heal, which none of you will at this point.” There’s a pause, and then Manuela draws a few more symbols on the board, and Linhardt recognizes his crest among them. “These crests make white magic more potent, if memory serves. I doubt any of you have them. The only crest among these that has even the slightest possibility of being passed on to you is the Crest of Cethleann.” Linhardt stares as she points to his crest and continues. “Saint Cethleann herself is said to choose the bearers of this crest, and no one has seen head nor tail of her in centuries. Still, there are those who bear it.”

Caspar probably doesn’t remember the flashing of the white-green symbol in the air above him, and Linhardt made certain to hide all traces of the “blessing” since his father’s reaction to it. Caspar doesn’t know. Linhardt finds that he wants Caspar to know, wants to trust in his friend and tell him everything. But his father’s words weigh harsh and heavy on his spirit.

“Enough about crests. Those are Hanneman’s thing anyway.” Manuela leaves the symbols there and continues her lecture. Linhardt decides he’ll have to seek out Hanneman later.

*~*~*

Byleth does not grow weary, no matter how much their companions complain. Still, they do need sleep just like any other. The Ashen Demon does not complain or argue when Jeralt agrees to let the mercenaries spend the weekend in Remire. They simply stand by and wait for their orders. Which turn out to be orders to get a good night’s rest because the next night would be cut short.

They see no problem with these orders. They rest.

Morning comes, and with it, the scent of fresh game being roasted for the mercenaries to enjoy. Byleth likes the taste of the meat their father hunts. It’s one thing they’re able to remember about themself. They like Jeralt’s cooking. And they aren’t alone in this opinion. The band of misfits, as their father tends to call them, are sitting with mouths watering staring wide eyed and excited at the meat turning on the spit.

Byleth doesn’t understand how the others express so strongly, or how they feel so strongly. Byleth feels, yes, but their feelings are dulled, foggy, uncertain. A suggestion that perhaps they should be feeling rather than a full feeling. Byleth doesn’t mind this. It’s just a part of who they are. But everyone else finds it concerning. Their father worries. But Jeralt always worries. Byleth could start smiling as wide and bright as the mercenary band and drink and sing and dance with them into the small hours of the morning, and Jeralt would be concerned. Likely for different reasons, but the point still stands.

Byleth knows they’re a rarity. An impossibility even. There is no other laguz, and they’ve seen many, with scales dotting their skin and crystalline claws at the end of their fingers and toes. It definitely isn’t normal for hawks. Byleth has foggy memories of a young hawk who begged to be Jeralt’s apprentice, and while they can’t remember much about them, they remember that the other didn’t have scales. Jeralt doesn’t have scales either. Byleth wonders, and they’re willing to bet it’s not the first time, what their mother was.

Jeralt rarely speaks of their mother. It hurts him to think of her, Byleth knows. Whoever, whatever she was, she was important to Jeralt. That’s all that really matters, in the end. She loved Jeralt, and she gave her life for Byleth. Which is a shame, because Byleth would hardly consider their existence as worth such a sacrifice. He won’t say it, but they’re almost certain their father doesn’t think it was worth it either. Byleth wonders if their mother were still alive, would it change the way they are? The hazy years behind them, would they be clear if she had lived?

It isn’t worth dwelling on. Byleth might not be able to find it in themself to feel truly sad over it, but the slight ache of knowing they should be is settling into place in their chest. They curl into their bed and draw their wings around their body like an extra blanket.

According to Jeralt, Byleth only ever looks really alive when they sleep. Maybe they’ll dream. They like dreaming.

*~*~*

Edelgard doesn’t like the idea of going camping, especially not with Hubert’s current state and her own health still slowly deteriorating. Still, it’s what has to be done. She’s alert and fearful the whole time. She knows bandits will be attacking them. She organized it, after all. But she organized the attack during a lapse in sanity, a lapse in judgement, during Hubert’s absence. She never told him. He’s going to worry.

The first night is uneventful. It’s the morning after the second night where things go horribly wrong.

Hubert is unresponsive when she tries to warn him, his eyes blank and unseeing. She suspects something is happening that she can’t interfere with. She can only hope that no one finds him like this.

Then the bandits arrive, and there’s screaming all around her. She runs outside, axe in hand, and there’s fighting all over the place. She steps in only to spot Claude fleeing, and Dimitri following. They’re being chased by a group just a bit too large for her liking, so she flies after them.

The bandits are fast, but they are beorc. Edelgard’s wings quickly bring her to Dimitri’s side, but Claude is faster than both of them. They reach Remire village around the same time, nonetheless. Apparently there is some luck on their side, because a group of mercenaries has been staying in the village. Claude is staring at the approaching bandits, ears raised and twitching. Dimitri is begging the mercenaries for help.

Edelgard stands to the side and feels nothing but guilt. Her wings hang heavy at her sides and her head aches. The shadows at the edges of the world are beginning to encroach on her, and she knows her clear mind won’t last when the fighting starts. Her grip on her axe is too tight, but she can barely feel the way the rough wood digs into her palms.

The scent of blood hits her nostrils and Edelgard is wrapped in the embrace of darkness.

The beast they made her to be raises its head and runs into battle.

*~*~*

Annette envies Dorothea and Dedue. All herons can sense negative energy, even those from Duscur. But Dedue and Dorothea can handle it so much better than Annette, and Linhardt often just sleeps through the chaos. While Annette sits and waits for the Knights of Seiros to finish driving off the remaining bandits that are in their camp. Drive off, or kill. And the feeling of a life leaving the world is painful, but not unbearable. It’s much more bearable with Mercedes by her side, chasing away the negativity with her gentle purring and soft nuzzling against Annette’s hands.

Mercedes has shifted. Annette hopes that the feline doesn’t exhaust herself trying to comfort her. Still, Mercedes’ fur is soft and smooth, and Annette’s shaking hands don’t bother her like they would an ordinary, non-laguz cat. Instead, there is soft purring and gentle kneading, the press of a feline head into the crook of a shoulder. Annette’s wings flutter, and she wants to wrap Mercedes up in their feathery embrace.

The chaos outside begins to settle, and Annette’s breath begins to even out. Still, there is negativity in the air, thick and heavy like stormclouds before the rain begins to fall. Mercedes’ positive aura is soothing, but Annette is more sensitive to the feelings around her than to Mercedes’ soft purr. There is panic, fear. Annette stands on shaky legs and Mercedes returns to her usual form to follow, her warm, soft hand still gently placed in Annette’s.

“Where is she?” Hubert roars, and Annette winces at the fear coming off him in waves. There is something not right with him, she can feel the cloud of darkness hanging above him, the figurative noose around his neck just waiting for the ground to drop out from under his feet, to leave him hanging and lifeless.

“We don’t know,” Dorothea sighs, “but I’m sure she’s fine. She can handle herself.”

“The last anyone saw, she, Claude, and the rabid prince were running that way,” Felix huffs, gesturing with a wing. “As long as that thing didn’t decide to add Edelgard’s wings to its collection, they’re fine.”

Hubert pales, which Annette previously hadn’t thought possible, and the sheer terror that radiates from him is enough to spur her into action. “Hey, um, I really don’t think Dimitri would hurt Edelgard. They’re okay.” Felix’s eyes flick to her wings, to her face, and she can sense his apprehension. Felix’s emotions are closely guarded, but that doesn’t matter to a heron. There’s an underlying layer of fear, fear of Dimitri. “Alois took a few knights to look for them. They’ll come back soon.”

Felix relaxes ever so slightly, almost unnoticeably. Hubert returns to his usual neutral expression, and his emotions are suddenly cut off from Annette’s senses, shrouded by the same darkness that threatens to choke him out.

“My apologies for overreacting,” Hubert says stiffly. “I am sure Lady Edelgard will be fine.” He shoots a glare at Felix, who just huffs.

Hubert walks away stiffly, and Felix approaches Annette with that glare on his face. “You didn’t know him,” Felix snarls, trying very hard to come off as angry rather than afraid. “That thing isn’t Dimitri. It’s a rabid animal, a monster.”

“Felix…” Annette frowns, and her wings fold back. “You knew him once, sure. But you can’t feel how Dimitri feels. He’s sad. He’s hurting. And he wants his friend back!” Annette’s clenched fists tremble, and she has to take in a deep breath of Mercedes’ still present gentleness before she can continue. “Why do you hate him, Felix?”

There’s a rush of things that Felix feels, and Annette feels their auras hit her like the torrent when the floodgates open. And Felix, dripping with heavy, wet sorrow, flies away.

“It’s okay, Annie. He doesn’t want to open up yet.” Mercedes’ gentle voice, still vibrating with the sound of her gentle purr, clears some of the confusion from Annette’s mind. “We’ll get to him sooner or later. I’m sure we will.”

Annette decides to trust her friend, and says a quiet, distant, “Thanks, Mercie.”

*~*~*

In the light of the rising sun, Edelgard’s dagger glints silver-gold. Her expression is angry rather than fearful as the bandit charges her, her wings flared wide and dominant.

And then Byleth <s>pushes her out of the way and takes an axe to the back. The blood soaking Edelgard’s body doesn’t seem to bother her, nor does the corpse she pushes off herself in order to lunge at the beorc bandit with furious, efficient stabs of the dagger. Dimitri stares, Jeralt screams. Claude pries an arrow from a dead body with tenderness in his eyes. Jeralt screams. Edelgard is an angel of death, kills every remaining beorc while Dimitri and Claude can only watch. Jeralt screams. Jeralt screams. Jeralt screams.</s> strikes the beorc back with strength their thin body looks unable to hold. Edelgard gasps as if woken by a bucket of cold water, horror dawning on her face. Jeralt smiles and congratulated his kid, and Claude runs over with his trademark grin and his bow slung over his back alongside a quiver of arrows, all clean and new and shining in the light. Dimitri stares at them for a long moment, but doesn’t remember why.

The Knights of Seiros arrive, led by Alois, and Dimitri feels relieved. The bandits immediately flee, chased by a few knights, while Alois steps toward Jeralt, a look of awe on his face. Dimitri turns away, stares at the bodies, at Edelgard wiping blood off her hands to the best of her ability, at Claude retrieving his arrows with a gentleness none of these filthy bandits deserve. He turns his gaze finally to the strange person who saved them from bandits and from themselves. Byleth is carefully and calmly wiping blood off their blade.

Byleth shouldn’t be as they are. Even the dragons don’t have scales like freckles over their skin, but here is Byleth, a hawk bearing green-white scales that reflect the morning light in an iridescent display. Dimitri wants to run his fingers over them, to feel if they’re smooth or rough, hard and firm or soft and supple. The hawk stares at him with piercing eyes and he knows they can’t read his mind, but their gaze seems to go straight through his layers and into his core. Those eyes are calculating, blank. Byleth is silent and still, their expression empty and unreadable.

Dimitri is quick to ask them to serve the kingdom. Edelgard and Claude seem to have the same idea, and Byleth just looks between them and shakes their head. They won’t pick one. Dimitri isn’t disappointed, but he’s afraid. Afraid that they will choose eventually, and it won’t be him, and he will face them on the battlefield, an impossibility wielding a blade like an extension of their arm, and maybe it is. Blank eyes and neutral face, cutting down all of Dimitri’s friends, then Dimitri himself.

The sky is red like blood as Alois begins to guide them on their long trek to the monastery. Dimitri trembles, and tries not to scream and howl with fury and grief.

The sky was red that day, red and black with fire and smoke, and that’s the main thing Dimitri remembers before gentle hands tucking him into a blanket of feathers.

*~*~*

Immediately after her return, Hubert is back to being Edelgard’s shadow. Shame engulfs him at his moment of weakness during the attack. He was lost in feverish visions of shadows and the cold grip of spirits on his body. He didn’t exactly sleep last night, but he has no time for rest, even if his head is pounding and his eyes keep trying to drift shut of their own accord. He is fine. Lady Edelgard disagrees. She catches him beginning to drift off and orders him to rest.

Nightmares plague him, as always. He dreams of falling more than anything else. Of how it feels to plunge towards the earth. Often, he dreams of diving towards something, but his wings aren’t strong enough to pull him upright, and he crashes into hard, firm ground. He never wakes up then. No, instead he lies in his dream and hurts, bleeds, breaks. When he does wake from those dreams, he hastily wipes any trace of fear from his face and begins the day as though it were normal.

This time, he dreams of hitting the ground, and waiting for Lady Edelgard to come save him. She will save him, he knows she will. Hubert lies bloody and broken and strewn across the rocks but she will find him, and she will have a healer with her, and he will be okay. But no matter how long he lies in wait, no matter how many times he screams her name, no one comes for him. There’s a voice just beyond his senses that he can’t identify, can’t make out. He calls to them. They only continue to speak just on the edge of hearing.

He wakes in a cold sweat, and immediately schools his face into his usual neutral glare. There’s someone knocking at his door. The unfortunately familiar voice of Ferdinand is asking him if he’s alright.

“Hubert von Vestra if you do not open the door this instant I will be forced to stoop to the ignoble task of breaking and entering,” Ferdinand is saying, and Hubert knows the hawk is completely serious, so he opens the door a crack to glare at him.

“What do you want.” It’s not a question. Hubert doesn’t really want the answer because, knowing Ferdinand, it will be a long and drawn out speech about how he nobly came to offer his noble aid to a fellow noble.

“I came to ensure you were not injured. It would not do to leave someone as important as you to suffer. Edelgard would be devastated.”

“I’m fine,” Hubert sighs.

“You overslept.”

Hubert freezes at that. “You must be joking.”

“No, it is quite late in the day, and several of our classmates expressed worry for you. I volunteered to come find you.”

Hubert hurriedly shuts the door and runs to the window, and, damn it all, the sun is up already. He curses quietly. Not quietly enough to avoid Ferdinand’s gasp of disapproval.

“Why did Lady Edelgard not wake me?” he demands, and Ferdinand, still on the other side of the door, makes a noise. “Tell me.”

“Well… she said that you had not been in the best health lately and she thought you ought to get some rest.” Hubert growls in frustration that she would go and tell Ferdinand of all people about his… mistake.

“What did she tell you?”

“Just that you had been unwell.” He relaxes slightly. “I came to ensure you were well enough to come to class.”

Hubert begrudgingly agrees, and quickly gets to putting on his uniform before Ferdinand can decide he needs help with that. He stares at himself in the small mirror for a moment. His face is pale, there are dark circles under his eyes, and he just overall looks horrible. He hates the sight of it. He’s terrifying to even look at, and he doesn’t particularly want to be. The mirror shatters and Hubert steps away from it.

“Fuck,” he says, with feeling.

“Hubert? Are you alright?” Ferdinand, damn him, is still standing outside the door and waiting for Hubert to come out. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No.” Hubert steps into the hallway, closing the door as quickly as possible. “I’m going to find Lady Edelgard.”

He starts walking before Ferdinand can say another word. His chest burns, as do his shoulders. He wants to get this over with. Today is already proving to be bothersome.

*~*~*

Hubert sweeps into the Black Eagles classroom with a shadow so oppressive that Linhardt stirs in his sleep.. 

“Hubie, could you tone down the doom and gloom a bit?” Dorothea sighs, pulling her wings in and brushing her hair out of her face. “I’d bet even _Dimitri_ can sense you.”

Hubert growls. “Do not call me Hubie.”

“We have an agreement, Hubie,” Dorothea sings, and she relishes in his frustration for the briefest of moments. “But seriously, you’re hard to be around right now.”

Hubert glares. Dorothea suspects he doesn't know he’s doing it, but his emotions are suddenly cut off from her senses. She supposes, strange and unnatural as it is, this is better than the almost painful negativity from before. If it was that bad for her, she can only imagine how poor Linhardt would feel if he woke up.

Unfortunately for everyone, Dorothea might have made Hubert even more negative and terrifying and generally bad for her and her fellow herons to be around. She doesn’t actually know, because he’s completely cut off from her senses, and she isn’t going to try to get through whatever’s blocking them off because Hubert is always dark and moody.

It’s Hanneman’s turn to teach them, it would seem. The older man (he’s old, but Dorothea isn’t impolite enough to refer to him as such, she isn’t that crass) quickly starts lecturing them about crests and their effects on different skills and attributes. Dorothea doesn’t hate crests, but she isn’t particularly fond of them either. They’re not the most pleasant thing to sense from people, and the feelings attached to them are even worse. Hanneman’s lecture is enough to bring the crests of her classmates to Dorothea’s attention. She wanted to let her classmates keep their secrets. But she can feel each gently pulsing crest, and she can feel something more alarming.

Edelgard has two crests. While never known to be impossible, it’s unheard of. Even more unusual is the second crest.

The Crest of Seiros is considered to be connected to the Hresvelg Eagles. It makes sense for Edelgard to bear it. But the second, unfamiliar crest… it burns at Dorothea’s senses whether she tries to reach for it or not, like a fire at her side. She’s curious about it. Still, she doesn’t want to know what it is. She’s afraid to know.

Linhardt seems interested in Hanneman’s lesson, the sleepy heron waking up to listen to the man talk. Dorothea wonders what interests him so much, but decides not to question it. She senses his Crest of Cethleann, which is rare, but not so much so that it would gain too much interest. Unless his line was known for not having crests. She wonders.

Her own lack of a crest frustrates her to no end. She is proud of what she’s made for herself now, but if she just bore a crest she wouldn’t have had to fight for it. She would be able to just pay her way through things, without resorting to selling her body. She shudders at the thought of the way grubby, grimy fingers grab at her wings. She’s exotic and rare, and they want a taste. If she were higher in society maybe she could deny them. Could scream for guards to lock up anyone who dared touch her sensitive feathers. But she is no noble, barely even a commoner. She is nobody, a nameless little whore in the streets, a faceless opera singer. A quick, exotic fuck.

She reins in her thoughts and feelings quickly, sighing at her lapse in concentration. She knows the other herons have sensed the shreds of negativity clinging to her like cobwebs. She can only hope they don’t see what’s under the surface. The dark, churning storm of hatred and feeling that would get her shunned by any other heron.

“Miss Arnault. Please pay attention.” Hanneman’s Sharp reprimand draws her back out of her mind and into the present. “Would you please tell me the answer to the question?”

Dorothea, tying up her feelings in a neat little bow, answers the question perfectly. She might not have made it into the Officers’ Academy by normal means, but she sure is smart enough if people would only give her a glance.


	6. Silly Boy

The mock battle creeps up on them and before anyone knows what’s happening, the three teachers are choosing classes to command.

Byleth stands in front of the Golden Deer with a plan. They do not say a word. The students all understand. Byleth stands on the battlefield and waits for it to start.

The battle is quick and clumsy, and if it weren’t for Byleth the Golden Deer may not have won. As it is, the Deer have Byleth, and the scaly hawk is fearsome. They knock more people out of the running than anyone saw coming. The Ashen Demon lives up to their name.

They look over their students with pride. This pride is hard to project to them, for Byleth still has no idea how to present their emotions like anyone else might. The class doesn’t seem to mind their lack of emotion. They have enough to make up for it.

Thanks to Raphael and Hilda making a visit to the kitchens, a makeshift feast has been thrown together for all three classes to enjoy together. It’s nothing extravagant or exciting, just a collection of things the students were able to cook, but the smile on Lysithea’s face as she takes a bite of Mercedes’ cupcakes or the way Felix’s ever present scowl becomes less intense when he’s offered a much less sweet muffin by Annette make it all too clear how important it is to them somehow.

Byleth’s eyes are sharp. They can see the way Hubert lingers in corners and shadows, the way Felix shoots fearful glances to Dimitri, the way Bernadetta is just slightly coaxed out of the corner at the promise of free cake. They make a mental note of each mannerism and expression, drawing up charts and diagrams in their head.

Sothis leans over the professor’s desk in the Golden Deer classroom and makes a noise between a sigh and a laugh. “They know so little of each other, and yet they laugh and eat like friends. I long to join them, if only I had a body of my own.”

Byleth doesn’t say a word. They simply stand and stare, and time ticks ahead one moment at a time until all is still and the only one remaining in the room is Byleth. They move slowly but purposefully, collecting the things left behind by the students, collecting her own meagre belongings, and then leaving the room.

*~*~*

In the darkness of the night, Annette is quieter than the whispering wind. She slips into the night with ease, and quickly flies to Felix’s room.

Sneaking into a boy’s room would be considered suspicious. So she doesn’t sneak in. She just knows that he sneaks out around this time each night to train until he can’t keep his eyes open or Ingrid comes to get him. She slips a small package through the open window, a basket of the muffins she and Mercie had baked just for him. A small note is attached. No matter how tempted she was, Annette didn’t read it. Mercie told her it was just for Felix, and she respects that.

She is just a messenger delivering Mercie’s kindness. She returns to her room with no one any the wiser. She sits and she opens her heart and she feels, feels Mercie’s worry, Bernadetta’s fear, Dorothea’s closely guarded emotions. She reaches further, feels further, and there’s Hilda’s cheer up above her, Lysithea’s frustration, Petra’s calm.

Annette breathes it all in, and galdrar flow from her lips late into the night. The world sleeps, and Annette sings. This is how it has always been, how it will always be. She spills her heart and soul onto the floor, into the air, lets the world hear her very being tearing its way out of her throat and into the earth, the sky, the whispers on the wind. She sings, and there is no one who can understand.

Dorothea might understand, but she is asleep, or at least barely awake. Her guard is lower in sleep, the darkness just clinging to her by day seeps from her by night. Annette knows her singing eases the pain, has felt the way Dorothea lightens even in sleep as her voice rings clear through Garreg Mach.

Annette sings, and wishes her wings were as pure and white as Linhardt’s, wishes her voice rang as loud and beautiful as Dorothea’s, wishes her body were built as strong as Dedue’s. She sings of all the things she wishes she were, wishes she had, and though none of them will ever come to be, she sings of her dreams. Of Mercie in her arms, warm skin pressed against warm skin, claws gripping feathers with gentle ferocity, wings spread wide and proud and sheltering them from the world.

When her song finally fades from her lips, she closes her eyes, and sleep takes her into its arms like a mother and lets her dream of all the things she’ll never have.

*~*~*

Annie sings, and Mercedes listens.

The ancient tongue is not one she understands. But she loves the sound of Annie’s voice, of the gentle rise and fall, the pained wails of someone who wants so desperately, the gentle whispers begging for something long lost. Annie is all of these things and more, her want so gentle and loving, her pleas more akin to the deference of bargains. The hope lacing each note like poison, intoxicatingly wonderful and dangerous. Annie is hope and joy and everything good, and Mercedes envies her.

Mercedes listens, long after the song has ended, waits for its echo to fade out of the air around her, around the monastery. The echo of hopes and dreams and heartbreak. Annie hurts, and Mercedes hurts with her. She doesn’t know what she would do without Annette there to balance her out. The shadows in her heart retreat with Annie’s very presence, dissipate with the sound of her song. Mercedes is the moon, and Annie is the sun, and neither is complete without the other.

Mercedes writes yet another note never to be delivered, to be burnt up in the fires of her heart. The words fall apart beneath her tears, run together and slip out of her grasp until she’s lying in the dark with a scrap of paper clutched to her breast and weeping, for she can never have that which she desires. And goddess, does she desire. She lies awake and _wants,_ wants so desperately it’s almost easy to forget that she can never have it.

Annette is like the sun, and Mercedes will burn up if she gets too close. But she’ll be damned if she won’t get close, if she won’t let herself burn up in that radiance, because Annette is beautiful, and Mercedes _wants._ And if the goddess won’t give Annie to her then she’ll die taking her for herself.

In the darkness of night, Mercedes’ heart holds nothing but the sweet poison of love. And as she drifts off to sleep, she still sees Annie’s smiling face burned onto her eyelids.

*~*~*

Felix is torn between being furious and being grateful for the muffin basket sitting on his windowsill when he returns.

He’s not surprised to read the note and learn that the muffins were given to him because no one else wanted them. He’s tired. Too tired to be properly angry that he was at the bottom of the list. He’ll probably be angry when he wakes up, but for now he just takes a muffin out of the basket and takes a bite. It’s good. He doesn’t understand why everyone else dislikes them. Maybe it’s because they aren’t sweet, but sweets are overrated.

Felix jumps at the sound of the rabid prince in the room beside him. The movement is too sharp and irregular to be anyone else. Felix wonders if it wants to come for his wings. He pulls them sharply into the small of his back. His body shakes, his heart pounds.

And then the movement stops, the rabid prince _whimpers_ and Felix wants to run as far away as possible and yet he wants to go into the prince’s room and put his hands around the sleeping beast’s throat and _squeeze._ until he stops moving, stops breathing, until that black heart stops beating.

Felix sinks into the floor, trembling with fear and anger and exhaustion all at once, and clenches his teeth to keep from screaming. The world is blurring and he hates everything about this, about the rabid prince, about Glenn. He wants to scream until his lungs give out.

Instead, there’s a knock at the door, and Felix is begrudgingly approaching it. His voice trembles ever so slightly when he asks who it is, and he resents that. He resents everything about it.

“Yours truly,” comes the vaguely flirtatious voice of Sylvain. Then, the voice goes serious. “I can hear you breathing pretty heavily in there. You alright?”

“I’m fine,” Felix snaps. “You don’t need to keep checking in on me.”

“Well you keep sneaking out and proving otherwise,” Sylvain retorts. “Let me in, Felix. Please. I’m worried about you. I’m so worried.”

“Go away,” Felix says, but his voice fails him and he’s choking on the sobs that threaten to tear from his throat. Tears burn in his eyes and he can’t keep fighting them off anymore.

“Fe. Let me in.”

And with that, there’s no fighting it. Felix opens the door and clings to his friend as though letting go would mean the end of him, and cries for the first time in far too long.

“You’re gonna be okay, Fe. It’s all gonna be okay.”

And in this moment, in the dark, with nothing but the moon lighting the hallway in a dim silver-blue, Felix almost lets himself believe it.

*~*~*

Morning brings with it a sense of inexplicable dread. As much as he wants to embrace the day with some semblance of energy, Linhardt lies in silent stillness and feels just a little too much. Stress and calm, sorrow and joy, all bombard him at once and it takes him a moment to shut himself off from it all.

He is afraid. He doesn’t know why, but something in the air is heavy and oppressive, and he is afraid. He wants to go back to sleep, but if he does there will almost definitely be someone coming to drag him out of bed. So he sits upright slowly, and prepares to deal with today.

Caspar’s bright cheeriness is simultaneously soothing against the heavy dread, and painful. There is no way today ends without disaster. There is no way Caspar’s optimism can balance it all out. Linhardt can feel everything all at once and it’s just so tiring, so very exhausting.

Class with Byleth is interesting, at least. The strange hawk moves with silent purpose, each movement carefully planned and executed, purposeful and swift. He envies their decisiveness. The way they glance around the room and make a list of things they will teach them, each one perfectly tailored to the individuals without so much as a second glance.

Unsettlingly, Byleth has no emotion. It isn’t guarded, like Dorothea, or shut out entirely, like Hubert. It just isn’t there to begin with. Linhardt can read them with ease, but there is nothing there to read. It frightens him more than he cares to admit.

Of course, Caspar is helping. The tiger always helps. As Linhardt drifts into uneasy rest against the crook of his shoulder, Caspar only runs his hand through his feathers with gentleness no one else has really shown him. He doesn’t try to wake the tired heron. And Linhardt is grateful. He sits in a state between waking and dreaming, until Byleth is staring him down and Caspar is begging them not to wake him and every part of the room is tense, oh so tense.

He pulls his wings into his side, as though it will make him invisible. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, pleads. And Byleth doesn’t say a word, just steps toward him with that decisive purpose, with their wings held high.

Linhardt cowers, waits for something to happen. For something to hurt. Byleth’s hand reaches for him and he flinches away from their touch. They retreat as though burned, a frown on their face, carefully calculated just like everything else.

Linhardt is tired. He doesn’t have the energy to meet Byleth’s eyes as they place a small slip of paper on his desk. And in writing as purposeful and decisive as the way they move, he sees a list of skills to work on. His hands shake, his wings press to his sides, but there is nothing else to it. He stares at the paper as though it will reveal everything to him if he stares hard enough.

Byleth returns to teaching.

Class ends mercifully quickly, and Linhardt is of course dragged to the training grounds where Caspar throws himself into training. The tiger shuns beorc weaponry, just as he always has. Everything is normal. Everything feels wrong.

He doesn’t mean to react violently when Annette’s hand rests on his shoulder. But he doesn’t have time to think, his body is moving, she is falling to the ground with a sound of pain. He wants to scream, but it won’t do any good. He just stares. Stares at the burn mark on her chest, so similar to the one that he inflicted on Caspar long ago. His father’s voice echoes in his head. Dangerous. He’s dangerous.

Annette doesn’t stay down. She sits back up and apologizes. Apologizes to _him_, as if he hadn’t just hurt her. As if he couldn’t have killed her. His hands burn like they did that time years ago. He stares at them as though they might turn on him next.

“Linhardt, it’s okay.” It’s not okay, it’s not okay. “I’m gonna be fine, Mercie knows healing spells. And Professor Manuela can fix this if she can’t..” Healing. Healing, he has to heal her. He clumsily reaches for the magic within him, desperate, panicking.

Her wounds vanish within instants, as does his energy. The panic is still there, still strong, and now everyone is staring, but he can’t help sinking to his knees. Caspar’s arms wrap around him and he clings desperately to that warmth.

“Lin, you alright?” Caspar’s voice is pleading. “Is something wrong?”

“I-I did it again,” is all he can manage, his throat constricting as though hands are wrapped around it.

He knew something was wrong. It was him. He is dangerous. Even if he can heal after, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He doesn’t want to fight.

He’s fairly certain Caspar takes him to Manuela. He registers her voice somewhere in the chaos of his feelings. Then he’s in his room, and Caspar is at his side. There’s silence, a sort of peace. Linhardt finds his panic abating. It’s over. Annette is okay, and he is fine.

“Father said I was dangerous.” The words spill out before he can stop them. “He said I would hurt you again. I didn’t, but I could have. I could have.” Caspar’s hands trace gentle patterns in his hair, across his wings. In the silence, Linhardt continues. “He was right. I am dangerous.”

“No,” Caspar says, with quiet conviction that seems out of place coming from him. “You’re not.”

In the corners of his mind, a voice, gentle and feminine, whispers, “It is not your fault.”

Linhardt feels tears running down his cheeks, but he doesn’t make a sound. He sits in the silence and focuses on Caspar, on his hands grooming feathers with gentleness so few get to see, on his aura of worry and kindness and something Linhardt can’t put a finger on.

He sleeps in Caspar’s arms, and dreams of soft green light and a familiar voice speaking soft reassurances.

*~*~*

Claude is nothing if not observant. Even from where he sits, he can see the way Ignatz eyes him to sketch the angle of his antlers, the way Lorenz glares venomously at him, the way Marianne glances around as if afraid someone will attack her at any moment. Hilda and Lysithea are exchanging sweets and stories, while Raphael watches Leonie fix a broken pair of gauntlets. Everything is calm and simple, and yet Claude can’t take his eyes off them.

His ears shift to pick up each and every noise. He hears whispered conversations and gentle breaths and everything in between, yet it does nothing to calm him. He isn’t sure if he prefers it here or back in Almyra. He thinks he preferred Almyra, because at least he understood things there. Here, there are things expected of him. Here, people think he should be different than he is.

Hilda is kind, maybe too kind. She steps towards him and offers him a place at the table with her and Lysithea, tells him she can paint his nails again, or do his hair, or distract him while Ignatz paints his antlers, or any number of simple things designed only for enjoyment that he isn’t used to being allowed.

“Come on,” she says. “We won’t bite.”

“Lysithea might,” he says with the grin he’s come to wear as a mask, though his insides twist with anxiety, with fear that she just wants something out of him. 

But she just laughs and takes his hand and looks through the mask into his fear and says, “Well, it won’t hurt much if she does.”

She ends up painting his antlers with layers of nail polish in pink and gold like filigree, with a delicate touch he couldn’t have expected from a tiger, couldn’t have expected from anyone. And he sits beneath the sun and watches Ignatz’ pencil move with his eyes to trace each curve, each tiny pattern of what Hilda’s gentle hands have made.

He wants to trust Hilda. He wants to trust _anyone,_ but his traitorous mind brings forth memories of people he trusted in the past, people who betrayed him, people who just wanted to get close, just wanted him dead. So Claude sits in practiced relaxation and lets them fawn over him (pun not intended, he has standards) while he listens to their quiet conversations and feels the way their hands touch him, waiting for something to break the illusion. Nothing does. Conversations don’t turn to violence. Hands remain gentle.

It shouldn’t matter, but it matters so much, it feels so wrong and yet so right. Claude is used to fighting, to twisting his words to his advantage and his body even more so. Maybe he doesn’t have to, here. But it feels wrong not to, feels terrifying to let someone even glimpse at what’s within him, behind his smirk and his jokes.

Hilda sees through him, and that’s both terrifying and wonderful.


	7. No one needs to hear your words

It’s almost time for the students’ first actual battle, and Byleth isn’t sure how to prepare them.

They stare at the notes they’ve been given, but it just doesn’t make sense to them. Should their first battle have terrified them to no end? Should their first kill have made them sick to their stomach? They felt nothing the first time they fought. They knew what they were doing, they saw the life leave their attacker’s eyes, but they felt nothing but the knowledge that the person lying on the ground wouldn’t be getting back up.

Byleth is not a kind or gentle teacher. They are harsh and swift in their lessons, sparring with students and showing no mercy on them. Each one falls to Byleth’s blade, only to be lifted again by their hand. Fall and rise, fall and rise, a rhythm in Byleth’s chest imitating a heartbeat.

Sothis asks them why. Why there is no tenderness to their interactions with the students, why there is no gentleness in their hands as they guide them. And Byleth has no answer. Jeralt shows them tenderness in his gaze when he speaks to them. Jeralt is gentle when he holds their hand and tells them about the monastery. Byleth is not their father. Byleth is Byleth, an impossibility, a hawk dotted with pale silver green like constellations across their skin.

“I am not tender,” Byleth says. “I am not gentle.”

“But you could be,” Sothis replies. “You could be the softness and warmth that they come home to.”

They don’t have a response to that. It’s just as well. They have to prepare the students to kill. Killing is a job that punishes tenderness and gentleness. Killing is a job as hard and cold as Byleth’s unbeating heart.

*~*~*

The shadows close in, and Edelgard screams. She doesn’t know what else to do. Her wings beat against still air, until slender fingers trace the feathers with precision, and everything stills. They’re here for her. They’re here. She screams and she screams and they’ve chained her up and gagged her until she can scream no more, yet still she tries.

She wakes with heaving gasps to her door slamming open, to raven wings wrapping around her with sudden, jerking movements. It takes her only a few moments to hear Hubert’s voice, and only a few more to realize it’s shaking. He whispers her name in a broken voice like a prayer to whatever god will listen, and he holds her in shaking arms and shaking wings as if letting go will be the end of him. Somehow, his fists in her feathers are more comforting than any amount of preening will ever be.

“Hubert,” she breathes, hoarse and breathless. “Hubert.”

“Edelgard,” he chokes back, his body slumping against hers and his wings sagging.

“It was just a nightmare,” she assures him, though her voice remains breathless and shaky. “I’m alright.”

“I heard you screaming, and I-” Hubert pauses for a moment, clearly trying to compose himself. Vulnerability has never been his thing, and Edelgard doubts it ever will be. “I would give my life to protect you,” he finishes, clearly not what he wanted to say.

She wraps him in her wings now, tracing careful hands over his feathers. “I’m okay,” she says, somewhere between the truth and a lie. “It was just a dream.”

When Hubert doesn’t reply and Edelgard looks down to find him sleeping, she worries. His body is limp and lifeless in her arms, but his chest rises and falls with breath, and his heart beats. She holds him as close to her chest as she dares, and she looks to the heavens as though the goddess ever listened to her prayers.

“What has he done?” she asks. “What has he sacrificed for me?”

The ceiling of her room gives no answers, and outside her window, torches flicker to life. Dawn creeps ever closer, and she sits in her room with her retainer in her arms and she weeps.

*~*~*

Marianne wonders how no one else heard the screams. She sits awake in the dark and she listens, and she hears manic muttering, and she feels the way darkness swarms the rooms so close to her own. It crosses her mind to worry about Hilda. It crosses her mind to worry about Edelgard, whose room sits at the epicentre of the shadow. She worries about neither. Worrying about them will only bring them harm.

Twice-Cursed. The words echo through her head and she wants to scream herself, but the sound is caught in her throat with the rest of her feelings. Twice-Cursed. That’s what they called her. That’s what Margrave Edmund told her she was. And she is, she thinks, as she stares at the dagger the professor gave her. Twice-Cursed.

She turns the dagger over in her hands.

Her brand would be the best place to start. She could dig the blade into the flesh it occupies and tear it out piece by piece. Then on to her heart. The very thing pumping the curses through her veins. Without it there would be nothing to keep them flowing.

There would be nothing left of her.

She drops the knife to the floor.

Her blood boils in her veins and silent tears roll down her cheeks, drip onto the floor. Twice-Cursed. The blood of beasts in her veins, no mark of them on her skin. The blood of warriors bright and clear on her flesh, branding her a product of betrayal. She stole something from her parents. She stole many things. Twice-Cursed, people whispered in place of her name. Twice-Cursed, they said, when her parents asked for shelter.

Marianne puts her head in her hands, and quiet sobs slip from her throat. Twice-Cursed. She stares at the veins tracing her hand and wonders what she might have done in a past life to deserve this fate. What her parents did to deserve her being born to them. She stares, and she wonders.

She’s afraid to fight at the end of the month. She’s afraid of what might happen. Of what she might do. Still, she will do what she has to. She will fight. She will live. She can heal, she can help. She has to.

*~*~*

The trip to Zanado is slower than Felix wants it to be. Sure, there’s no rush to reach it. The bandits won’t be coming out of their hiding place any time soon. But the anticipation, the fear… it burns in his chest and he just wants everything to be over and done with already.

The rabid prince leads beside Hanneman. Felix wants to pull Dedue away and scream warnings to him, tell him what the beast he follows blindly is capable of. He doesn’t say a word. He walks with stiff limbs, and his wings twitch and flutter at any odd movement from the rabid prince. He’s afraid, so afraid.

Sylvain clings to Felix’s side, and he’s not sure if that’s relieving or not. It probably is. There’s something nice about the warmth the cat radiates. Something soft and wonderful. Felix finds his wings shifting to arch protectively over Sylvain’s back, and quickly snaps them back to his own sides. He thinks his face might have gone red, if the way his cheeks burn is anything to go by.

Sylvain thankfully doesn’t say a word. Maybe he knows this is the wrong time to tease Felix, or maybe he just didn’t notice the instincts that took control for a moment. There’s a shift in the warmth at Felix’s side, as Sylvain begins to purr softly. The tension melts out of his body just a little bit.

“Are we going to talk about the other night?” Sylvain asks, and the tension comes back with a vengeance.

“I’d rather not,” Felix snaps, maybe a bit more harshly than intended.

“Felix, me and Ingrid are worried about you. And I know you hate him right now, but Dimitri is worried too.”

“Leave the rabid prince out of this.” Sylvain’s ears flatten at the hiss in Felix’s tone, and his tail flicks a few times. “I’m fine. Drop it.”

“Felix, I can’t just ‘drop it,’ you’re my friend. I’m worried. This isn’t like you.”

“People change,” Felix breathes, quiet and sharp. “I’ve changed.”

He beats his wings to fly above the group, the rushing wind biting at his face and ears and roaring with the fury of the beast that stole his friend’s face preferable to the sounds of people talking below him. Higher, higher, higher, until they’re as small as ants. Higher, until the air is thin and it’s hard to breathe, and the tears in his eyes aren’t from the feelings making their home in his chest, they’re not, they’re _not._ They’re from the wind in his face, which brushes them away as quickly as they form, harsh and yet gentler than so many others he used to know. His chest doesn't ache with the pain of his heart breaking, but with the exertion of his muscles as he beats his wings against the air. His arms aren’t stinging from where his fingernails dig into the flesh, but from where the wind cuts into skin like tiny blades.

He doesn’t descend from his place in the skies until they reach Zanado, because by then they have other things to focus on. They don’t ask about his tear stained cheeks or the crescent moon markings pressed into his arms. They just put a blade in his hand (finally blood will spill you can show them why you’re better) and strap armor onto his limbs (stronger than dragon scales, so much harder to stain, blood will spill and you will return to normal as if nothing happened) and Felix’s wings spread wide as they can and he just wants to finish this quickly.

Battle isn’t new to him. Taking lives isn’t new to him. But when he last attended a battle it was the rabid prince tearing limbs from limp torsos and the stench of blood was sickening. Now the taste of it on his lips is enthralling, the squelch of flesh making way for his sword as beautiful as a heron’s song to his ears. He wants to kill, to feel blood on his talons. He wants to be stronger than the rabid prince, better than him.

Felix kills the last of the bandits that attacked him and immediately the good feelings fall away, and he falls, shaking, into the bloody grass. His wings press tightly to his sides, he puts his hand over his mouth to keep himself from coughing up all the words that ring in his ears (monster, monster, you killed them all, you’re no better than he is) and the scream that lodges in his throat.

Instead of the words, what comes up is a mouthful of his victims’ blood.

*~*~*

Claude has fought before. Claude has killed before. And yet, here he stands, shaking minutely as he draws his bowstring and launches an arrow with deadly precision. It meets its mark and the blood falls, and Claude can only stare in disgust at what he’s done. He decides against retrieving the arrow. He knows that’s a foolish decision but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to get it out of the flesh it lies in without vomiting. Death is one thing when he’s saving his own hide. It’s another entirely when these people are barely fighting back. Sure, they are fighting back, but their movements are sloppy. Their swings are too heavy to hit anything, least of all Claude, who moves swift as wind through the battlefield.

There’s blood on his antlers, not that he particularly cares. They make a fine weapon when the enemy gets close and he’s forced to shift. The blood drips down to his face, however, and that’s less than ideal. He would rather spend as little of this fight shifted as possible. The longer he remains shifted, the easier it is to see one of the many little things about him that aren’t right.

He wishes he were back in Almyra, where he could fight with vicious fangs and harsh blows. But here such tactics would only draw suspicion- a Riegan deer using the battle techniques of Almyra is unheard of. He wishes it weren’t, wishes he could fight the way he always has instead of goring people with his antlers. The taste of blood in his mouth is preferable to the way it feels dripping through his hair and across his face. He feels sick, but he can’t exactly leave the battle to go do something like throw up. They need him. Everyone needs him. He looks to where Hilda tears through her foes with axe and claw alike, to where poor little Marianne throws desperate healing spells to as many people as she can, and he steels himself for impact.

His antlers tear through another bandit, and he feels tears fall from his eyes. He doesn’t want to do this. He wants to go home. He wants to go home.

He can never go home again. He doesn’t have one anymore.

Marianne stares at him with fearful eyes, and he can’t blame her. Blood soaks his hair and drips down his face, rests on his antlers like a mantle of death. There are tears in his eyes and his hide is matted with blood. Marianne’s movements are gentle even as they are frantic. She heals his minor wounds and begs him not to fight anymore but he can’t stop here, not now. He has nowhere to retreat to, no place to call safe.

*~*~*

Linhardt doesn’t want to fight. He wants to go back to bed and hide under the covers and sleep there until the fighting is over. Until everyone is done trying to kill each other.

Another bandit narrowly misses him and his breathing goes sharp and heavy. He doesn’t want to fight. He doesn’t want to. Images of Caspar lying limp in the grass swim behind his eyes and he feels sick. He doesn’t mean to kill the bandit, but fire bursts from his fingertips and the beorc _screams_ and then Linhardt can’t breathe. He can’t breathe, and he curls in on himself as if that will soothe the way his body revolts. It’s one thing to feel the other bandits’ lives cut short by the others. It’s another entirely to feel them leave the world at his hands. He shakes and the world around him fades in and out and thank the goddess he’s alone right now because he doesn’t think he could deal with it if someone saw him like this.

Caspar’s name claws its way out of his throat and it hurts, it hurts so much, he has never felt pain like this before. He chokes out Caspar’s name again, followed by the contents of his stomach. Hands grip his shaking shoulders and he’s terrified for a moment that a bandit has found him and he’s going to die, but then he’s pulled in close to a strong chest and warmth and the familiar feeling of Caspar all around him. He’s trembling, and Caspar smells of sweat and blood, but those arms around Linhardt’s frail body are comforting. He’s weak and trembling and everything burns but Caspar’s arms are around him and that’s all that really matters.

“I killed someone,” he chokes on the words, but doesn’t let himself stop. “I didn’t mean to, Caspar, I…”

“You did great,” Caspar says, instead of hating him, instead of reprimanding him. “You did what you had to.”

A bloodied thumb wipes tears from Linhardt’s eyes, and he can feel the smear of red left in their place. “I think… I am going to faint,” Linhardt admits, and Caspar just lifts him into those strong arms like he weighs nothing. To Caspar, he probably does. “I hate blood, Caspar. I hate it.”

So quietly he isn’t sure the voice even belongs to his friend, Linhardt hears Caspar whisper, “Me too.”

His body is trembling and the world fades out again. Linhardt thinks he hears screaming, somewhere far away. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize the screaming is coming from him.

He doesn’t come back to himself until the fighting is over.


	8. Let it go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magic crackles at her fingertips and she fights with all the volatility of someone like her. Of someone with so little time. She wishes her body were not so frail. Wishes that perhaps she was one of the laguz so she could have clawed and torn at her captors. But House Ordelia is one of few noble houses of beorc. It’s supposed to be a source of pride. It isn’t. Not to Lysithea.

Marianne doesn’t want to kill anyone. But the bandits approach her and she’s afraid.

Claude knocks several out of her way, leaving their bodies to litter the ground around her. The smell is sickening (it smells so delicious, won’t you just take a bite) and the way their faces twist into a horrific last scream makes her want to run far away (why do you run from what you are, just embrace it).

Her blood burns in her veins as she swings her sword in a mockery of any real skill (if you just listened to us you could be so much stronger) to keep the bandits back. She doesn’t want to feel it sink into their flesh (you want to feel your teeth tear through it, it’s so much more satisfying) and she doesn’t want to see the red leak from their bodies onto the ground (drink it up, don’t let it go to waste).

She finds herself locked in a struggle with a large, particularly tough bandit, her muscles straining to hold his axe away from her body. She inevitably fails, but rolls out of the way. Blood drips from where her sword managed to nick his face (delicious, just take a sip) and she wants to throw up. His axe comes back towards her and she doesn’t have time to react.

The wound burns, and so does her blood. The world around her runs red and she screams and then when she’s fully aware again the bandit is on the ground and a jagged cut runs across his chest. It bubbles. This time, she does throw up. She doesn’t have time for much vulnerability before a cat laguz is approaching her with fangs bared and body shifting. Not for the first time, she wishes she could shift (you could if only you listened to us) and tear into him with claws sharper than any sword she could hold.

Her blade will have to do. It draws dancing red patterns in the air, in the enemy’s skin, across the grass. Marianne bleeds and she screams and her blood runs into the earth and for a moment, a brief moment of clarity amidst the chaos, she thinks she understands why they call this place the Red Canyon. She feels something more. She feels connected to the earth, the sky, and everything in between.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and she can’t remember why.

*~*~*

Hubert has killed. He has killed numerous times, and the blood on his hands has stained them, though only to his eyes. But he has never fought on a battlefield where he was out in the open and yet he could not fly. He has never felt the spirits swirling and screaming around him as he stares down beorc and laguz alike with disdain. He has never killed without talons and knives and great black wings.

The shadows dance at his command. They reach and stretch and swallow up his enemies in their grasp. Hubert’s chest burns where the marking rests, but he doesn’t stop. He can’t. He’ll die if he does. Lady Edelgard might die if he does, and then everything will have been for nothing.

He’s burning alive and his enemies are being dragged into hell with him. His wings ache and strain to lift him off the ground even as he stands still and silent and watches.

He’s losing himself. Slipping through his fingers like sand. The spirits holler and hoot and he finds himself at their whims like a puppet in the hands of the puppeteer. They pull strings with expert hands, and he is helpless.

It hits him now more than ever that he’s made a mistake. The world bends around him as easy as if it were a sheet of paper in his hands, but he stings and burns from the way it fights back. It does not fight his actions. But it fights his body, his mind. He is losing his mind. He is burning. His wings are held wide and high above him, and he feels how weak they are. How unbearably useless.

He is a weapon, and he is deadly. A dagger sharpened on the whetstone of tragedy and desperation until it could cut through bone as easily as cutting through air. Until the universe itself parts at its edge and frays at the seams, is torn to shreds by the slightest motion. Hubert stands with great black wings that cannot carry him off the ground, and he is the shadow of vengeance. The scythe of death.

As the bandits scatter like shadows exposed to light, Hubert is the darkness that consumes them. He throws clouds of miasma, and the bandits sizzle and burn like meat on the flames. The world is the spit on which they all turn, and they may pray the goddess turns it fast enough to spare them, but she has stepped away from the fire. Hubert is the beast that comes to devour what’s been left behind, and he will do his job with a dark respect for what could have been.

He hears someone calling his name, as though from somewhere far away. There are hands holding his face, eyes staring into his, a face so familiar and yet so foreign with fear written across it. He does not move. White hair. Violet eyes. Slim, trembling hands. White wings wrapped around his body, which he is now realizing has been shaking for a long time. He is in the embrace of an angel, of a divinity, descended from the heavens to bring guidance to those the goddess has forsaken. In her arms, he can do nothing but cry.

From his lips, her name falls. A question, an uncertainty. She cries against his chest. White hair, white wings, violet eyes. He did this for her, didn’t he? He thinks he did this for her. He breathes in, out, in, out, she smells of the lavender oils he buys to help her sleep and the forest after it rains. He breathes her name again, a prayer, a devotion to her, to her divinity.

“Lady Edelgard,” he breathes.

“Hubert,” she cries, and it occurs to him that maybe she’s begging.

*~*~*

The air is heavy with dark magic, and Lysithea is intrigued by it. By the raven standing a fair distance from her, wings held high, shadows dancing about him. He’s not like her, his body isn’t as frail and his hair is black as night where hers is bleached white by the things they did to her. But he’s not one of them. He can’t be. His magic is too uncoordinated and clearly new to him.

Magic crackles at her fingertips and she fights with all the volatility of someone like her. Of someone with so little time. She wishes her body were not so frail. Wishes that perhaps she was one of the laguz so she could have clawed and torn at her captors. But House Ordelia is one of few noble houses of beorc. It’s supposed to be a source of pride. It isn’t. Not to Lysithea.

Bandits surge and fall like waves on the shore, and her hands burn with the fury of the shadows she wields. She is rage and power and fear all at once, and she has no problems killing the beorc and laguz alike. She envies them. Their longer life expectancy. Their fierce builds. She is nothing compared to them, just a girl with a tattoo. Her magic is the only thing between her and certain death.

She doesn’t have time for this.

The burst of strength she releases is enough to send waves of her enemies to their knees in a single breath. She feels no remorse. She only presses the assault, raining death on them. They weep and beg and she says nothing. She has no time for mercy, for forgiveness. She has no time for anything, her body is falling apart and she’s afraid of what will happen to her when it finally gives in.

She is running. She is running and the sands of time suck and drag at her feet and she is running out of time, she’s _running out of time._ The world stands still around her and she runs, she fights, she screams. And still in the end she will sink below the sand and into the darkness and the quiet, where no one will hear her and her last scream will fill her mouth with earth.

Breathe. In, out. In, out. She is powerful, she still has some time left. Darkness washes over the battlefield at her whispered command, she is more powerful than the fools who crumple and fall before her. They are insects drawn to her flame, and she will burn them up and leave nothing left. She will devour them and they will be nothing but her sustenance, which will be more than they ever could have dreamed of being.

She is more powerful than the dragons, more graceful than the herons. She stands here, on the battlefield, and she is above the goddess. She is a blight on the goddess’ blessed earth and she will take as many others down with her as she can. The shadows will call her name for years to come, and long after the goddess has faded into nothing but a distant memory, Lysithea will be remembered.

Or at least, she hopes she will.

Blood soaks the battlefield. Lysithea drifts above it all.

*~*~*

Mercedes descends on the bandits in a flurry of cream-white fur and vicious fangs and sharp claws. She is divine fury, merciless and righteous. She has a strong distaste for the blood that soaks into her pelt, an even stronger distaste for those desecrating these holy grounds.

The Red Canyon isn’t red. It shimmers in shades of green and blue and silver and gold beneath the spring sunlight, and there would be not a hint of the red in its name if it weren’t for the blood being spilled across its hallowed soil.

She wonders if it earned its name from the leaves in autumn. If it shifts from its otherworldly hues to fiery red and gold and then to the hibernal brown and silver-white of winter. She does not know. She has never visited Zanado before.

Her fingertips are dyed red from the blood she’s spilled when she reverts to her usual shape. She ignores the way they slide and leave trails of red across her hands as she clasps them tight in silent prayer. She weaves magic in her breaths, in her thoughts, and she commands blazing fire in a march across the battlefield.

Her breaths come calm and deep and slow despite the haze over the battlefield. Despite the blood in her hair and on her hands and on her face. She breathes in deep, and exhales the heat of the flames she commands. She is holy, blessed, powerful. Her magic is the blaze of divinity, the will of the goddess made tangible.

She raises her hands to the sky as if to embrace the goddess herself and pull her from her perch in the heavens. As if she could grasp her hands like an old friend’s and smile and see the goddess smile back.

The flames blaze and dance and die out as she caves in on herself as though struck by a fist to the gut. She trembles for the briefest of moments, breathes deep and heavy and laboured. She screams, desperate and pained and vicious all at once.

She shifts and her movements are filled with a renewed vigor. Claws and fangs stain red with blood and her fur is matted with the same. She is stained from her creamy off-white to a nauseating pink-red. She howls her pain to the earth, the sky, the wind that will carry it between them. She lifts herself high to the divine even as she is stained with the filth of mortality. And in the shadow of what has happened to her, what has happened to everyone else, she glows. She is radiant.

*~*~*

Her instincts are screaming _danger, danger_, but Bernadetta stands her ground, bow in hand, head held high. She is trembling. Her aim is deadly nonetheless. Fear fuels her to fight, even as it screams at her to run. Her ears are flat to her skull and her tail flicks dust and dirt into the air with each lash.

She breathes in deep and even, goes still, looses an arrow. And then she exhales with all the steadiness of an untrained tightrope walker. She feels like she’s walking a tightrope herself, somewhere between the danger of the front lines and the danger of home along the safety here in the back lines with a bow in her hands and a quiver of arrows at her back. She walks a tightrope in the stars and if she falls she will burn up in the atmosphere as she plummets faster, faster, faster.

The world around her moves, moves, moves, and she stands tall even as she is trembling and frightened. There’s a rhythm to the battlefield, a rhythm to her heartbeat, a rhythm to the way blood pours and pulses from wounds. An erratic, terrifying rhythm, but a rhythm nonetheless. Her fingers pluck at her bowstring like the delicate fingers of the harpists she once watched playing elegant melodies at a fancy dinner party her mother took her to long ago. Before she was afraid to step outside her room.

Maybe if things were different, Bernadetta would be a harpist. Her fingers would coax melodies from wire and her voice would rise strong and beautiful beside it. Her mane would flow long and beautiful, waves of lilac on pale and supple skin. Or perhaps her skin would be darker, burned from milk-white to rose-gold by the embrace of gentle sunbeams. Tears would well in eyes like polished amethyst from the words of her song, the beauty of her heart.

Here, now, her eyes are dulled and the tears that draw trails on her cheeks are from fear. Her fingers call arcs of arrows to fly at her desperate command, steel-tipped and lethal. It is only a matter of time before her quiver empties and all she has left is fangs and claws she’s been taught her whole life to avoid using. The fear hammers in her head and in her heart and yet…

She breathes in slowly.

Fingers close around the shaft of an arrow. Her eyes stare at her target with the shine of a dulled blade. She knocks the arrow and her arm draws back Her tail lashes in sweeping motions in time with the beat of her heart, the rush of blood in her ears, the thundering footsteps of her foes.

Her fingers let the arrow fly. It soars with a grace Bernadetta has never been able to muster, and then, with just as much elegance, plunges into the flesh between plates of hardened leather in a spray of red. The bandit falls to his knees, crumples like a scrap of paper in her fist when the words on its surface don’t sound the way they’re supposed to.

She exhales, and her breath is carried away on the wind.


End file.
